Marketing Consulting
I made the decision last week to attempt what I previously thought was relatively undoable for my business and/or personal life and pull out of the Twitter stream and Facebook world, and Instagram performance art gallery. Some of that was due to this liturgical season of Lent and some of that was my constant need … Continue reading A Week Without Twitter (or Facebook)
"The sublime—whether a feature of the natural world, or of UFOs, or of religious experience—is a sense of our own vanishing smallness before something impossibly vast: a mountain range, a churning ocean, the universe, God. What we get in return for being so existentially demeaned is freedom from the tyranny of our own personalities, a … Continue reading The Sublime and Silicon Valley
Today we already see that private messaging, ephemeral stories, and small groups are by far the fastest growing areas of online communication. There are a number of reasons for this. Many people prefer the intimacy of communicating one-on-one or with just a few friends. People are more cautious of having a permanent record of what … Continue reading The Next Social Network is Private Messaging
Some days... I just don't know... wow. Marketers, however, are taking the bait. Nik Sharma, the head of DTC at VaynerMedia, told The Atlantic, “being the first brand to crack out of the egg is worth at least $10 million.” He went on to say that businesses, in fact, should “spend on the egg instead of … Continue reading Instagram egg is worth “at least $10M”
Only a matter of time before us 40-year-olds start spinning up Instagram party accounts (just like we took over Facebook)!... While Facebook event pages make clear who their organizers are, Instagram party accounts frequently don’t divulge that information. The anonymity of a party page allows for plausible deniability if the account gets discovered by a … Continue reading Instagram Party Accounts
Marketing and NASCAR are two of my longtime passions (lots of overlap on that Venn Diagram)... so I couldn't resist sharing these stats. Interesting to note that Danica retired from NASCAR after this year's Daytona 500... that doesn't say very good things about the health of the sport from a marketing perspective. Kyle Busch led … Continue reading NASCAR’s Social Media Leaderboard
Just this past week I was having coffee with a friend who volunteers to manage all the social media and website duties for his church (bless them). They're savvy and very good about getting their church on Facebook Live each Sunday and creating shareable content throughout the week. I brought up Instagram Stories during … Continue reading Instagram Stories Maker (for Churches, Nonprofits etc)
More and more of my clients on the nonprofit and church side are asking about Instagram Stories and experimenting with them in some form to help with outreach. Like anything on the web or mobile, it's always fun to dive in and try things out. But there's no need to reinvent the wheel if you're … Continue reading Instagram Stories for Churches and Nonprofits
For starters, this is the end of Instagram as we know it. Systrom and Krieger were deeply involved in day-to-day product decisions, and retained an unusual degree of autonomy over the company. For years, they were careful to the point of being obstinate. Even as they began to expand Instagram’s suite of offerings, they remained … Continue reading Instagram is Dead
Within the advertising industry, the debate about whether advertising works on Facebook is not new. A survey last year showed over 60 percent of small business owners felt advertising on Facebook was ineffective. The lawsuit takes it a step further, saying Facebook is misleading advertisers. Source: Does Facebook Really Work? People Question Effectiveness Of Ads … Continue reading Do Facebook Ads Really Work?
I still firmly believe we'll see a reckoning of sorts for social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter (and even Instagram and its lovely filters) where the network effect takes a backseat to quality interactions and we move away from hegemonic one-size-fits-all walled gardens towards decentralized and specified communities based on our preferences. Reddit is … Continue reading The reason Twitter will ultimately fail
For years, marketers have tried to attribute social directly to sales, but industry standards and consumer data reveal that their true focus should be expanding awareness and consideration.Think long-term, not quick fix. Think relationships, not attribution. Source: The 2018 Sprout Social Index | Sprout Social The biggest mistake I see churches and nonprofits make when … Continue reading Churches and nonprofits shouldn’t focus on attribution as a social media goal
Dave Winer: 1. Eliminate the character limit, allow for linking, simple styles, titles and enclosures (for podcasting). The move to 280 chars was so successful, that should be a clue. Remove the barriers to expression and let the whole web in via linking. Handle length the way Facebook does with a see more link. It's … Continue reading Improving Twitter in 2018?
Common sense advice here, but I see mistakes like using the same hashtags over and over and over (or using hashtags that have nothing to do with a post) way too often (particularly from nonprofits)... As for the practice of using the same long list of hashtags on every post… Don’t do it. Instagram’s community … Continue reading The 2018 Instagram Hashtag Guide
The impression-based market on Facebook ads haven't resulted in a solid and stable pricing model for most direct-to-consumer companies (or nonprofits, churches, community groups etc). The targeting capabilities are exciting, but the pricing costs for ads have to match up with the returns. So now we're all flocking to Instagram Stories... Digiday spoke with 10 … Continue reading Facebook ads prices are too high and companies are shifting to Instagram
Wow, these stats are really quite something. Facebook dominates the social media landscape for older Americans, but teens have moved on to YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat over the last 3-4 years. Astonishing changes in usage percentages and something Facebook, and marketers, should really be concerned about (yes, Instagram is owned by Facebook but the Newsfeed … Continue reading Teens Have Officially Moved Beyond Facebook
My clients often don't realize that Facebook, Instagram or Twitter place content directly in front of users eyeballs based on when things are posted. We live in the "attention" era and you have to not only produce worthwhile content to get noticed but also maintain interest and relationship. Three main factors determine what you see … Continue reading How Instagram’s algorithm works
In fact, research shows that there isn’t a high correlation between reading time and social sharing. As you can see from the graph, the high read time doesn’t translate to shares. Just because someone clicked a share button, it doesn’t mean that they were engaged with the content. Source: How to Effectively Manage Engagement for Stronger Influence
"Nearly all marketers (83%+) who've been employing social media marketing for 1 year or longer report it generates exposure for their businesses." I'm skeptical of these sorts of reports generally, but SME does a good job of presenting digestible data. There are certainly some good takeaways here for businesses of all sizes, nonprofits, and churches looking to … Continue reading 2018 Social Media Marketing Industry Report by Social Media Examiner
Looks that way. This is potentially huge for small businesses that use Instagram for promotions of their products (I know I follow several boutique accounts promoting everything from pens to knives to stationary)... Instagram just stealthily added a native payments feature to its app for some users. It lets you register a debit or credit … Continue reading Will you be able to buy items on Instagram soon?