YouTube has over 3 billion views every 24 hours.

Think of the influence YouTube has had on musicians, brands and reputations – Justin Bieber, Orabrush and Domino’s Pizza have gone viral via video marketing. As marketers, we need to understand that not everyone is going to be influenced by traditional media alone. With the increase of fan and follower participation through social media, consumers are clearly interested in interacting with brands and businesses.

Video marketing can help enhance your SEO campaigns and maintain a strong social profile. An important aspect of videos is that they can be picked up by both social media and search engines. They can even rank higher than your brand’s website in search engines. “You Tube is actually the biggest social media site […] it’s bigger than Facebook or Twitter” (Scott Imbrie, “6 Best Practices For Small Business YouTube Marketing”, 11.6.2011).

When it comes to video marketing, I say go big or go home. Marketers need to constantly experiment and test ideas. We don’t know what really works until we try. Test and tweak ideas as much as needed to get your consumers excited and involved.  After all, the use of videos is a great way to boost visibility and drive engagement.

When you get a chance, check out this really cool interactive film by Chris Milk ft. the Arcade Fire (built in HTML5) – The Wilderness Downtown

Happy Halloween!

Are you ready for the big Halloween scare? Facebook and Twitter do not define social media.

Social media refers to a core strategy in which we create content to engage consumers. The idea is that marketers should use social media (Facebook, Twitter and the like) to leverage their content strategies.

Top performers use social media for customization – segmentation based on both behavioral patterns and demographics. Your consumers deserve personalization because they are loyal and rely on your relationships with them. Not only will this increase customer involvement, but it will keep the customer up to date on what your brand is doing in relation to their specific wants and needs.

Chicago’s Best TV produces episodes with relevant content through the use of social media. The hosts go to restaurants in or around Chicago to find the best eats based on fan and follower suggestions. At the end of each segment the hosts say something along the lines of “if you know a place where we should go to find the best [insert food here] hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, ChicagosBestTv.com, you know the drill.” This encourages customers to get in on the action and support their favorite Chicago bites. Chicago’s Best TV’s integration of website and social engagement encourages their fan base to scope out their personal local favorites.

The most important thing marketers can do is keep content relevant. Send the right message at the right place and time and use the right platform. Don’t just jump on the social media bandwagon because everyone else is. Strategies still need a content marketing blueprint.

Being responsive is at the core of interactive marketing.

Consumer empowerment has taken over marketer power for what seems like the past decade. With the tremendous growth of social media, consumers expect marketers to know everything about their buying habits and patterns. Social media has enabled consumer loyalty, but not necessarily the consumer experience. A company may have a massive brand presence on Facebook, but having one million fans does not mean they are giving the consumer the desired brand experience.

Interactive Marketing Plus

Social media provides the opportunity for market researchers to listen to and mine consumer insights, but this is not the only opportunity presented. Social media allows consumers to directly respond to the changing marketing conditions. Social networking has created a virtual space for people to be advocates for their fellow brand ambassadors. However, interactive marketing involves more than just internet marketing.

Crowdsourcing & Measurable Results

Consumers are more likely to talk about a brand via social media rather than through surveys. Although social networks use analytical software to produce measureable results, they are slow to make the data, analysis, and insights available to marketers. Marketers need to reconnect with consumers to optimize the consumer promise and the brand promise.

The mission and challenge for marketers is to be responsive to consumers’ concerns and behaviors with a more measureable, data driven approach by customizing the marketing experience.

It is time for marketers to engage with consumers and effectively meet their expectations. The question remains: when it comes to interactive marketing, who is really in control?

Evolve or become the next fossil in the wake of social media and brand management. The days of sitting in the ivory tower on a pile of cash are over, you’ve got to be with the masses in the muck to get any kind of footing in the new business of curating the attention of others.

But how?

Be a thought leader, become a peer, and transform your brand into a competitive, free-content driven resource for others to utilize. “It used to be so easy when dollars equaled dominance, but now there’s a digital fly in the ointment,” (Brand Week, 4.4.11, p. 12) and that fly is causing huge ripples for brands.

It’s all well and good to be a big dog brand but without drawing people’s focused attention to your content, a big old fossilized dog your brand will become. Content can be bought but the reality is content is generated every second by a spectrum of free agents, and catering to and providing for that new power is essential.

It is important now to bolster one’s in-house talents and recruit those well-versed in generating interest in the new way — social media. Whether brands adapt or not, those who are watching them are most likely tweeting, facebooking and blogging about them — after all “a person’s a person no matter how small” (thanks Dr. Seuss).

Facebook may have a serious following of 600 million worldwide but LinkedIn is the number one social media network in terms of growth; 1 million new users a week.  From jump street, LinkedIn established Q&A online communities through groups (both private and public). Self-identifying groups with large amounts of members are attractive potential markets.

B-to-B marketers are finding that LinkedIn and these communities, or groups, are the best platforms from which they can communicate with one another and create exposure for themselves. In the constant effort to appear more transparent, LinkedIn has a more buttoned-up, purely professional feel than Facebook or Twitter making it a good spring board for lead-generation and continued and open dialog.

Facebook’s answer to the Q&A feature of LinkedIn, that attracts so many, is the “Questions” tab. This recent and slyly added  feature hasn’t blasted users with the usual Facebook overhaul alerts, “we revamped the entire lay-out of Facebook, get ready for the switch-over”.

You’ll only notice “Questions” when you’re updating your status on your profile page. The move to the additional feature without any official announcement is interesting because of Facebook’s other intentions.

The minds at Facebook have delved further into discussions about implementing real-time advertisement solutions based on your status updates and “questions”. Will this be Facebook’s attempt to gain more users and compete in LinkedIn’s category? Food for thought.

Two dimensional QR codes have been alive and abroad for several years and yet, the U.S. hasn’t quite taken to them.  Customers and users still aren’t sure what to do with them or why they’re on packages and posters. The early adopters didn’t spread as quickly as other technologies that were more tangible.

Marketers must educate the public about using the QR codes, why they are useful and why they are integral to our mobile world. Perhaps they’ve been marketed wrong or not at all – there certainly was no debut like the unveiling of the iPad2 so the codes have largely fallen under the radar. B2B Magazine found that “1% of U.S. mobile phone owners and 5% of smartphone owners had used a 2D barcode scanner in the previous three months” (B2B 3.14.11, p.11).

The importance of the QR code is its ability to act as a bridge between our physical and printed world to the virtual world. The 2D codes offer a direct line to further information for consumers. Post™ Cereals, Macy’s and art museums now sport the codes as another way to attract their audience to the continued conversation (discounts, events, consumer appreciation, surveys, give-aways, contests) and further strengthen the feedback loop. The inherent risks of the technology are broken links, codes that aren’t compatible with users’ mobile devices and thus loss of interest. Given time to develop and greater accessibility this could be the new technology with which the U.S. finally gets on board.

We all know them, the mascots of large corporations — the creepy King of Burger King (since retired), Flo with her bump-it of Progressive Insurance, Mayhem (a personal favorite) of All State Insurance and now “Peggy” of Discover Credit-Cards in his Coogi sweater (tapping into call-center nightmares and a touch of xenophobia).

The latter two fall into a category of marketing that highlights the awful aspects of life or customer service as the antithesis to their great services.  Domino’s pioneered the first giant step into this category creating ads emphasizing how truly terrible their pizza was.

Instead of denying the problem, Domino’s tapped its customers’ complaints and made the necessary improvements. Then they televized it with customer pictures from the dark ages of pizza delivered with all the toppings stuck to the box, juxtaposed against customer pictures of the next generation pizza used in their national ad campaigns. You know you’ve got smart PR people working for you when you can talk into Oprah’s third ear, Gayle King about a pizza chain.

How does this affect change in other industries? I’ll sound like a broken record, but social media is the golden ticket. We’re getting back to basics where the customer is always right and away from the old school of marketing where the customer was merely a vessel to imbibe what we poured out.

Complaints can be addressed in real time; they can even be tracked to locate the person complaining so it’s easy to provide them with the nearest available store, repair center or customer service outpost. Change is scary and it’s especially scary if it’s what’s holding your company back from its full potential. In the case of Domino’s, a complete overhaul was essential to garnering larger market shares and new customers. Social media carries the conversation over from that half minute ad into the full monty of Twitter and Facebook and enhances that almighty bottom line.

A huge SNAFU happened a few weeks ago with two large companies, Chrysler and AFLAC, all thanks to two individual Twitter accounts.

An employee at New Media Strategies let slip an f-bomb and slammed Detroit drivers in what they thought was a personal account and turned out to be the @ChryslerAutos account. Regardless of which account was used, the tweet was a red flag warning for agencies and companies.

Gilbert Gottfried whose famously grating voice has been tethered to the AFLAC duck was released from the position for insensitive tweets following the devastation wreaked by tsunamis that hit Japan several weeks ago.

Some may argue that there is a steep learning curve for social media but I’d like to bring back the old adage “If you wouldn’t want it published on the front page of the New York Times, then don’t say it”. The employee did not verbalize these thoughts but social media is the new dialogue, the new conversation.  Facebook, Twitter and blogs are our second generation vocal cords with which we communicate with one another.

Judgment was swift: New Media Strategies was down an employee and Gilbert Gottfried was no longer quacking his way to insurance holders. Now the debate rages: who should control a company’s social media messaging?  The break-down of silos between marketing, communications and public relations is the key to successful messaging. Without complete integration and constant communication, a company’s messaging can run into snags which global media outlets will happily document.

Myth #1 about social media: Don’t call yourself a guru.

Never would I ever presume to be a guru but my Twitter does label me as “The Official Twitter of …”.  This was first point made by HubSpot Social Media Scientist, Dan Zarrella in his webinar, “The Science of Timing“: identify yourself authoritatively so people will listen when you talk through social media, email and blogging.

This was my first webinar and besides the tinny audio it was a fascinating presentation and most importantly, useful. Which was nice, because if you’re going to talk for an hour it had better be about something I can put to work and incorporate into my life.

Zarrella illustrated the various ways in which timing and frequency of posting can effect the number of people reading, retweeting, linking, blogging, commenting, subscribing, following, liking your content. He compared the social media spaces and communities that engage in conversation with one another daily to a cocktail party: everyone’s milling around talking at the same time — it’s hard to be heard in that setting. So what is it like when you’ve separated yourself out from that rowdy bunch? What does the data look like when we measure these effects throughout the day by hour, from Sunday through Monday?

Here are your marching orders:

Late in the day and week is the most retweetable time during the day — 2 to 5pm have the most activity on Twitter for retweets.
Tweet more — don’t be afraid to tweet more, Zarrella’s data show that someone tweeting 22 times a day has more followers.
Don’t crowd your content — don’t tweet the same link the same way if you tweet it more than once, give your tweet a little breathing room before you tweet the same link in a different way.
Weekends are best for Facebook sharing — on Twitter, the volume of stories on the wekend is less than during the week but Facebook sharing spikes on the weekends.
Experiment with emailing on the weekends – if you’re looking to up your click through rate, weekends are optimal for highest click through rate.
Send Email very early in the morning to take advantage of contra-competitive timing — this is the idea of the cocktail party, you’ll get more attention if you’re talking when other people aren’t, such as the early morning when people are waking up and checking their email for the first time that day. You want them to wake up to your message.
Send more email — if you’r generating good content, the more emails you send the less people will unsubscribe, and those that do aren’t your target audience.
Your newest subscribers are your best — they are volunteering to read your content and listen, the more recent your subscriber the higher your click through rate.
Know your audience — you can conduct a quick survey to find out your audience’s reading habits and what they want to have sent to them.
Blog on the weekends for comments – you’ve got their full attention if you’ve posted something on Saturday or Sunday early in the morning.
Blog early in the morning for links — most bloggers are aiming to write their posts from 8-10am so they are looking for source material to write about which has been posted by 6 or 7am.
Blog more frequently — the more frequently you blog, the more views you’ll get.

You can view The Science of Timing webinar recording here to get more detailed information and data about the effects of timing on social media, email and blogging.

Another windy morning in Chicago last Thursday ushered in an intrepid LoSasso quartet to The Drake Hotel. Awaiting LoSasso President, Scott LoSasso and Vice President, Mark Hollingsworth were professors from colleges and universities around the Midwest, plumbing the depths of LoSasso’s interactive marketing expertise at the 2011 Spring Marketing Management Association Conference. The talk was organized by Don Jones and resulted in great dialogue between area professors and our LoSasso team.

The presentation addressed changes in the marketing industry and what businesses are looking for in new hires, especially those undergraduates hot off the presses. Particular attention was paid to content driven interaction: the driving force behind creating a space for consumers to interact with one another and with businesses. Industry forums and social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquare) have become the new quilting circle or local watering hole where information is readily exchanged, available and digested at a rapid pace.

The message was clear: the toolbox has changed but the fundamental principles of marketing have stayed the same. Developing a relationship with a client is still at the core of those principles; it is the way in which we enhance that relationship that has grown to include social media, SEO (search engine optimization) and the need to build a presence both physically and virtually for every client.

Frequent and consistent messaging continues to be of utmost importance but a close second is the need for silos within businesses to break down. More than ever, direct marketing and public relations are completely meshed together: communications and marketing departments have to interface constantly to maintain that consistent messaging for optimal success in their campaigns.

The discussion was also centered around best practices for hiring and what makes a new hire successful. Scott LoSasso initiated the conversation by outlining optimal job candidates that contribute to a team work environment. Incoming new hires are strong writers, positive team players, involved in an array of social media platforms, creative thinkers and detail-oriented. For more information about skill sets businesses look for in new hires, visit iMedia Connection.

Thank you to the Marketing Management Association, Don Jones, The Drake Hotel and all in attendance for a great open discussion about our evolving industry!