Social Should Complement, Not Replace

With Facebook's public stock offering taking center stage on Wall Street last week, the spotlight on social networking and media has intensified. While social may have established itself as a brand-building requirement, its role in the marketing channel mix will continue to be scrutinized and analyzed. And rightfully so. Many marketers have learned the hard way that social media platforms can't yet replace all other marketing channels. Instead of an either or strategy, smart Rainmakers know that social efforts should not represent a stand-alone solution, but rather be an integrated part of a broader strategy that leverages the scale and consistency of paid and owned media. A Facebook brand page, YouTube channel or blog illustrates a brand's willingness to communicate directly with consumers on their terms. That social interaction can help brands build consumer trust, differentiate themselves through emotional connections and leverage the loyalty of dedicated fans. But as we saw

Facebook News Feeds You Can Use

In an effort to focus and promote content sharing, Facebook has changed its news feed algorithm settings. Have you noticed that you're not seeing news feeds from a lot of your Facebook friends ? But you are seeing a lot from certain friends lately ? That's because Facebook changed the news feed default to streams from only those friends you've recently interacted with. You can change that by editing Friends and clicking "All Friends" That gets you back to seeing news feeds from everyone. For Rainmakers, this Facebook move actually makes sense because the platform is really all about digital WOM and content sharing. If you're not doing anything with most news feed streams, that creates an inefficient environment for those who are targeting you via the social media giant. On the other hand, if the platform keeps you seeing content that you're most likely to share, it becomes a lot more efficient as a tool for its advertisers.

What's Your Social Media Engagement Quotient ?

We saw substantive growth in social media usage in 2010 and accordingly product brands increased their marketing investments in platforms like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and Foursquare. Based on a recent HubSpot report, advertisers spent more than $1.7 billion on social media marketing in the United States. More than $3.4 billion have been spent globally. These expenditures reflect a growing adoption by Rainmakers of the effectiveness of social media platforms. Not surprisingly, more than  53 percent of social media marketing investments are made in targeted text and click-through image ads on Facebook. More than half of those brands investing in social media have Facebook Fan pages and generate about 4 posts per week. Almost three-quarters (65 percent) of social media brand proponents have corporate or product Twitter accounts, generating more than 27 tweets weekly. And as Internet content becomes more and more visual, brands have not lagged behind. More than half of companies active in the social media realm have YouTube channels and are updating their channel's video content with about 10 new videos monthly. And while there's still a lot of progress to be made in the brand blogosphere, today more than one-third of companies have an active product or corporate blog where they interact with their customers and followers. Are you engaged in social media ? If not, you could be missing out on a rich exchange of valuable information to help you become more effective digital marketers.

Star Power Sells Product On Facebook

Innovative rainmakers at a digital advertising firm called Ad.ly have convinced a handful of global brands that celebrity posting and comments on its Facebook branded pages will help move the sales needle. Small retail brand, PetFlow, has already leveraged Ad.ly's automated platform via reality show star Heidi Montag's Facebook page. The star's account posted the following message this week: "Just found Petflow.com, they deliver pet food right to my door for free! No more lugging heavy bags!". 

This new star power social media endorsement platform is being taken seriously by celebrities and companies alike.
Ad.ly's platform enables celebrities, athletes, or other popular personalities place ads into their social activity posting streams. Other celebrities participating in this new product endorsement format include skateboarding legend Tony Hawk, reality TV star Kim Kardashian, NBA basketball player Paul Pierce, comedic talk show host Stephen Colbert, and TV personality Dr. Drew Pinsky. The celebrities get compensated for the commercial posts on a pay-per-message model.
Payments are based on an equation that includes: their number of followers/fans/friends on a social site; how often they tweet or post, and engagement achieved (number of replies, re-tweets, click-throughs, etc.). Endorsements posts by celebrities for major brands should begin appearing on Facebook within the next three or four weeks.