The End of Google Plus?

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It seems the end is nigh for Google+ after all. With the announcement that Vic Gundotra is leaving Google after 8 years of helming the ill-fated social network, sources have been divulging that Google+ will be shifting from product-hood to being a platform.

This makes a lot of sense with the lauded launch of Google +Posts. Earlier this month, they had announced they were expanding the program and opening up to allow specific brands to use its monetization tools. +Posts stood to make Google’s current ad format less ad-like and eminently social.

For those familiar with Google+, the network has been appropriately labeled a ghost town, despite having 400+ million users. The social site was off to a many-years-long rough start, but as anyone who has visited their Google+ profile can tell you, recently things have been a lot smoother, intuitive, and dare I say, pretty.

Google+ is arguably the slickest, coolest social site that just didn’t happen. They embraced large format photos and hashtags with aplomb, the companion app is bold and Instagram-like, and Google Hangouts are well, just straight up cool. It was just too little too late.

So, I bid thee adieu, Google+ as you go the wave of Google Wave.

Will you be missing Google+ as much as I will

 

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Wrong Kind of Viral? NYPD Twitter Backlash Spreads

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Tread carefully out there. That well-intentioned hashtag you just crafted: it’s branded without being cloying, it’s set to engage, you’ve gone and prepped some very cool assets — you are waiting with bated breath for it to go viral. Who doesn’t love cats after all?

But oh! What’s that you see in your stream? You’ve just stoked the ire of the Internet. Moreover, they aren’t exactly trolls but customers with real complaints. Your hashtag has been hijacked.

While in hindsight is very easy to see why the New York Police Department’s #myNYPD attempt was an exercise in futility, it might not have been so obvious for the U.S. Postal Service last month. On the whole, their Twitter campaign looked pretty benign. They even brought in Spiderman for a photo op.

Time To Pay Up

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We all know there is no such thing as a free lunch. Now the same can be said even on social networks.  We have  entered a new era where this is about to become painfully clear to anyone involved in marketing. The dynamic has dramatically shifted.

If you have a message you want to be seen on the social network of your choice, you have to pay for it.  Good content is no longer enough. Social media is now very much paid media.

Infographic from SimplyMeasured

A lot of people better read up on their KPIs because paid social media doesn’t live in a vacuum.

Until now the social channels have been owned by the social marketing team, not the media buyer, but as the Facebook organic reach crisis has proven, great content on its own won’t be discovered by anyone.

If you don’t pay for your social media posts to be promoted going forward, chances are slim that anyone will see it. So you better have a good distribution planner and some serious dollars attached to your social media content.

Being present and engaging on social media is not a choice for most brands, it’s simply a requirement, as the audience now is all over social sites.

The social networks have known this for some time and with sponsored posts and native advertising they just needed to tweak their algorithms to have us in a head-lock. Hardly a surprise that this would happen, but still. Welcome to the rest of your lives, brands. This game just got serious.

Image Source: TheSteveSports

State Of Social Media Marketing

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It’s been an interesting past year for social media. Facebook has seen friction from both brands and users. The ever-fickle teenager moves platform to platform the moment they detect a marketer’s handiwork impinging on their territory.

Digiday compiled the most meaningful and interesting of what could be called the state of social media marketing in graphs containing data from eMarketer, Shopify, DigitalInsights and Vine.

Intriguing trends emerge. Social media users continue to grow in number and are doing so at a much more steady rate than one might imagine, Facebook is strong in user numbers but Google Plus is catching up, and social ad spend grows in relation to growth of users, along with spend per user. Facebook is the reigning king on social when it comes to purchase conversion rates, but look at what’s following behind– video-centric platforms YouTube, Vimeo and Instagram.

What does the future hold This year looks to be the year of social video– if it wasn’t last year, it certainly is now moreso. Instagram’s notably engaging platform has added video and Twitter’s Vine chugs along, Facebook’s continues testing out 15-second video ads and YouTube’s Susan Wojcicki has plans to make YouTube stars really, really famous.
Check out the data for yourself below.

Snapchat Encourages Imaginative Content

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Snapchat’s features provide a lot of room for creativity. The platform’s text, drawing and video features go beyond just the quotidien photo and filter choice. The fact that each message self destructs after viiewing also means you ought to create something memorable. It takes a lot of foresight and planning to make something worth watching.

Shaun McBride is something of an expert Snapchat doodler when he’s not a sales representaitve for snowboard companies. The 26 year old has just upped the ante for Snapchats everywhere. To follow McBride on Snapchat is like entering an alternate universe.

“Snapchat is such an incredible concept, it gives you the ability to take everyday situations and turn them into something hilarious by just adding some text or a drawing,” said McBride in a recent interview with Digiday. “I like being able to interrupt someone’s busy day with 10 seconds to open my snap and smile or laugh.”

McBride sees Snapchat as a way to go beyond just engaging with a brand’s customers– by befriending them.

“I have seen some brands use it effectively; others aren’t understanding the concept of having a personality and keeping things random and fresh. Snapchat is not about planned campaigns; it is about having a creative mind dropping hilarious content and interacting with its followers on the regular.”

Take a look-see at the sort of mind dropping content McBride creates below.

 

 

 

 

Source: Digiday

Facebook Loses Importance With Teens

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A lot can happen in a year. From Spring 2013 to now, the most important social platform to U.S. teens has shifted from Facebook to Twitter and then to Instagram according to a report from PiperJaffray. Facebook’s importance to teens has declined by nearly half. Twitter seems to have experienced a brief rise in importance relative to other social networks before falling back to its original level.

Perhaps the most important thing to note is what this chart does not show. That from this relatively short period of time, what teens consider to be the most important of social networks is moving away from these top 3. Instagram may be the current title holder, but its prominence isn’t what Facebook’s was a year ago while Twitter isn’t keeping up.

Facebook’s preciptous fall in favor may be part of a larger trend of teens diversifying social platforms with gusto. The chart doesn’t show SnapChat, Tumblr, Pinterest or a number of other networks popular with this age group. Perhaps within the next year, we’ll be seeing a new network or two make their way into this graphic.

Source: Statista

 

Twitter Gets New Look

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You may have already seen a new look for your Twitter page and if you haven’t yet, you’ll be getting it rolled out within the next few weeks according to Twitter.

Get those large landscape cover photos ready because Twitter is about to supersize it with profile photos also getting special treatment. Have a few witticisms you want to highlight? Twitter is now giving you the ability to pin tweets you’d like to showcase to the very top of your profile. The pinning function is very brand-focused, allowing marketers to put their best foot forward and promote more effectively.

Twitter’s redesign comes after concerns about user growth on the platform earlier this year. This move hopes to make new Twitter users feel at ease and make those who don’t use Twitter on a regular basis find it more appealing as a visual experience.

You can see the full redesign on the TODAY Show’s Twitter account here.

 

Source: VentureBeat

Instagram Ad Campaigns Get Pricey

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Instagram is ready to advertise with the big companies.

Following a test run with ten different advertisers last year, the site, owned by Facebook, has begun pitching new Instagram ads with CPM’s that could run a pretty steep price – anywhere from six to seven digits, depending on both reach and frequency.

One executive with the company stated that a month-long purchase could run as high as $500,000, while another stated that a similar period of time could run double that at $1 million. Another chimed in that the rates could go anywhere between $350,000 to $1 million, although no range has been permanently set just yet.

CPM’s with the program will be based on factors such as targeting (including age and gender perimeters), as well as reach and frequency.

Instagram didn’t make any official statements on pricing, although several companies are already interested, including Taco Bell, who has begun to use Instagram to showcase its new breakfast menu.

Source: AdAge

200 Million Users On Instagram

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Instagram is growing fast. Just over a year ago, Instagram announced they had amassed 100 million active users and as of this week are showing that this number has doubled. Overall, Instagram users have created and shared 20 billion photos on the app to date.

Facebook’s decision to buy Instagram in April of 2012 may prove to have been a very smart decision. While users are skewing a bit older on Facebook these days, Instagram is an attractive to a younger crowd, the 18-24 set that Facebook has been losing. Moreover, Instagram is a highly engaging content platform as more than half of its users use it daily.

This is great news for brands who want to leverage this platform as research from L2 Think Tank back in December showed that Instagram’s engagement scored much, much higher than other comparable social sites like Google+, Twitter and of course, Facebook. By and large, brands have created a presence on Instagram as a result. As of December of last year, 89 percent of brands had both a Facebook and Instagram account.

While brands are on board, there is evidence that they aren’t necessarily making the most of it. For all the engagement to be garnered, only nine percent were soliciting user-generated content on the platform and 12 percent had promoted their Instagram account within the past 30 days.

 

Source: PC Mag

Pinterest Preps For Brands

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Pinterest has been doing much in a way to prepare for the demand for ads on its platform in the way of Rich Pins, which are essentially promoted posts and creating a site in which advertising could be virtually seamless. For a site which is essentially a large community of curated wishlists, it’s no wonder that brands are eager to get on board.

CEO of Pinterest, Ben Silbermann has said that these paid pins will be marked to distinguish the placement and will be relevant to the interests of its users. This will allow Pinterest to continue to not use banners or pop-up ads.

The roll-out is coming out this 2nd quarter which will entail either a cost-per-thousand impressions model or a cost-per-click.

Source: Pinterest

Source: Adweek