brennanschliphack-blog

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Analyzing Millennial’s Online Habits

May 8, 2019

          A recent article titled, “Shifts in Millennial Social Media Habits Financial Marketers Can Tap” by Bill Streeter discusses new research surrounding young adults and their spending habits. With 73 million American adults as of 2019, millennials will soon be the largest single generational segment. With so much potential, marketers have really been focusing on the market potential of this age group. According to the Clever Real Estate who did a study on which social media platform advertisements have resulted in a sale, the largest amount of products bought by young adults (aged 18-34) was Facebook with 58% of respondents having purchased a product or service on the platform, followed by Instagram at 55%, followed by YouTube at 51%, then Pinterest at 29%, Twitter at 17%, Snapchat at 15%, Tumblr at 9%, Reddit at 2%, and Linkedin at 0%. While Facebook remains on top, for millennials, Facebook has continued to lose favor likely due to the rise in popularity of Instagram. In terms of what type of content millennials prefer to engage with, images, video, and some search engine advertisements seem to work best. This makes sense when considering how fast Instagram and YouTube have been on the rise. Lastly, this study found that millennials are drawn to things they find relatable such as blogs or YouTube personalities, and are more willing than baby boomers to purchase items off social media recommendations. With this in mind, marketers should focus on creating visual, authentic content utilizing Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube to reach young adults. This material applies directly to class as if marketers are aware of what types of content age groups typically prefer, we can curtail content to meet the audience’s expectation.

Sources: https://thefinancialbrand.com/83144/millennial-social-media-financial-marketers/

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Is Facebook Dead?

May 1, 2019

         Is Facebook a dying social media platform? After reading the article, “Experts urge agents to consider non-Facebook marketing efforts” by Jamie Biesiada, it made me question the future implications of Facebook as a choice of platform. For travel advisors, Facebook has been on of the leading social media platforms; however, the recent data breaches and misguided information Facebook has provided has created distrust for the platform. Despite these issues, Facebook has a massive user-base with approximately 95% of social media participants using Facebook with Instagram as a distant second. While the daily active users of Facebook have been on the rise since 2008, its growth rate has begun slowing down in 2017 going down from a 67% increase, to a 62% increase in 2018, down to a 61% increase in 2019. Many analysts, such as Andy Ogg, believe that the distrust associated with the platform has made a direct impact on the decline. When considering the alternatives specifically for advisors, social networks like Yelp, Google Reviews, and Nextdoor, all contain much smaller local social networks with great opportunity. In addition, Instagram presents itself as an excellent alternative to Facebook in many ways in terms of its visual appearance, growing numbers, and increasing social media platform changes such as the implementation of Instagram stories. While it should be noted that Instagram is owned by Facebook, Facebook seems to have taken the brunt of the negative public perception. Where I come down on this concept is the idea of diversification. While I do not see Facebook going away any time soon, I see the potential of many smaller social media companies, even in platforms such as TikTok which have only recently gained attention. For those of you who do not know, TikTok is a social media platform which allows users to take video clips of themselves similar to the dead platform Vine. As a marketer, it is crucial to diversify the way one advertises a brand in order to maximize search engine optimization and to build awareness within multiple communities across multiple platforms. This article gives a very interesting perception of Facebook and reminds marketers to take into consideration social media platforms public perception, ultimately reminding us to not rely on just one social media marketing platform to distribute information.

Sources: https://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-News/Travel-Agent-Issues/Experts-urge-agents-to-consider-non-Facebook-marketing-efforts

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Influencer Marketing

April 27, 2019

          After reading an article on Social Media Today titled, “What's the Future of Influencer Marketing?” by Pheobe Bain, it sparked my interest regarding the importance of influencer marketing. To recap from class, an influencer is someone who holds a certain level of trust in a community who has the power to influence the perception of others. Social media influencers give credibility to businesses, products, or ad campaigns and therefore, are a really useful marketing tool. According to the article, “Hello Society's data shows that its campaigns drive 54% higher engagement than the industry average, and that its influencers, specifically, deliver a 24% higher engagement rate versus traditional brand content on social.” With this much leverage, utilizing social media influencers is crucial to having online success and to build brand trust. In looking forward to 2019, Hello Society’s research recognizes that one major mistake brands make with influencers is by only temporarily partnering with them for individual campaigns rather than build a long term relationship. Influencers who post 2 or more campaigns about a brand are proven to experience a significant increase in engagement. This strategy also is crucial to building trust between an influencer’s followers and a brand. This article also recognizes the future potential of Instagram due to its unique visual experience and its platform optimization in terms of mobile, in-app purchasing and as a platform for communication. While Instagram has a lot of future potential, marketers should be aware of the hard stance it has taken on transparency on partnerships, making it required to acknowledge paid partnerships to consumers. This is crucial for social media users to be aware of what information might be influenced by a partnership. Having more information in the hand of consumers does not negatively impact the effect of social influencers, rather it allows consumers to make better-informed decisions. In addition, ad transparency tools have allowed brands to track organic engagements within partnerships and pay attention to measuring metrics. All marketers should try to utilize influencer marketing in building brand awareness.

Sources: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/whats-the-future-of-influencer-marketing-qa-with-pamela-kaupinen-of-hell/552858/

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Social Media Optimization via Automated Tools

April 17th, 2019

          On the Entrepreneur, a recent article titled “Save Time and Money with This Social Media Automation Tool,” describes a new software for digital marketers to track social media marketing performance. With automation becoming so prevalent, more and more social media marketers are using automated tools to help guide one’s online marketing success. According to the article, companies such as Havas, Ogilvy, and Microsoft all utilize the tool “Social Status.” This tool has gained a lot of recent media coverage and offers a multitude services such as offering marketers Ad Analytics, Influencer Analytics, Profile Analytics, and Competitor Analytics to gauge impressions, campaign performances, as well as traditional KPIs. Prices for Social Status’s services range as low as free which includes 3 social profiles, 1 month of data history, 1 report credit per month and report formats. From here, there are many more packages available to meet a company’s needs going all the way up to $1,499 a month which offers 1 year of data history, unlimited social profiles, unlimited monthly report credits, unlimited users, pdf reports and PowerPoints. With all this data accessible to marketers, similarly to what is offered with Hoot Suite Premium, it makes it easier to gauge the performance of social media strategies. This relates directly back to the concept of KPI or Key Performance Indicator, in making sure marketers are meeting their social media objectives. Some typical KPIs include conversion rates, clicks, likes shares, comments, followers, profile visits, link referrals, etc. It will be interesting to see how many marketers adopt tools like Social Status to better optimize their own performance. Click the link for more information about the platform– https://www.socialstatus.io/

Sources: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/332172

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Lush Stops Using Social Media? - The Difficulties of Digital Marketing

April 10, 2019

The article which inspired this week’s blog entry an article on The Drum titled, “Lush abandons social media: it's 'getting harder' to talk to customers.” Lush is a popular cosmetics company, who in the UK market, will be stepping away from social media focusing their attention on influencer marketing and reaching out directly to the consumer. Despite their large following of 202,000 followers on Twitter, 423,143 followers on Facebook, and a whopping 569,000 followers on Instagram, Lush still finds it difficult to market to consumers. This statement reminds us of how difficult our current culture is to reach consumers. For example, as we discussed in class, many people operate the internet with an ad blocker preventing users from seeing advertisements in the first place and many advertisements on social media platforms such as Instagram are simply scrolled past without being acknowledged. This is why it is crucial to post intriguing, well-polished content to gain attention. In addition, Lush found themselves constantly fighting with social media algorithms to appear early on in peoples’ newsfeed and do not feel their efforts are being rewarded. This shift to a direct to consumer marketing strategy may be effective, but is a risky decision to abandon traditional social media marketing altogether. Critic Tamara Littleton mentions this when she writes, “Brands that do well keep a presence on social using paid and relevant content as a strategy, because if they don’t have a voice on social, not only do they risk losing their competitive advantage, but they will also be on the back-foot during a crisis. Retail is continually under threat so why cut off the opportunity to stay present and relevant?" In addition to this criticism, it is important to mention that while many posts may be ineffective, all it takes is one small advertisement to plant the seed for users who have not heard about Lush as a brand to look into them. While in the United States, Lush will continue to post, this decision will be made in the United Kingdom. Lush’s response to this decision is as follows, "This isn't the end, it's just the start of something new…” It will be interesting to see the impact of this decision. In the meantime, what do you think? Is this a smart decision for Lush as a brand?

Sources: https://www.thedrum.com/news/2019/04/09/lush-abandons-social-media-its-getting-harder-talk-customers

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How to Grow Your Social Media Presence?

April 6, 2019

This week I analyzed the article “How to Quickly Expand Your Social Marketing Presence” which was posted yesterday, on April 5th, 2019 on the ways in which marketers can adapt to a changing culture. For example, there are 2 billion active Facebook users, so marketers who see the potential in this platform should be aware of how to present information to these users. The article lists four principles for marketers to adapt and judge their own work by. Firstly, it is crucial to determine your audience. When performing search engine optimization for a company, it is important to decide who your target audience is in terms of age, race, goals, behavior, and so on. This question should be asked to better understand who your audience is and what steps marketers should take in order to attract these consumers. For example, if I am a company like Nike I should consistently ask myself, who do we market Jordan sneakers primarily to? The sneaker-head demographic typically are men aged 16 to 26 years old, so by knowing this information, marketers can target advertisements directly to these consumers. Using your ideal audience, marketers then should look into how to make connections. By concentrating on building brand awareness and producing content to target these audiences is a powerful way of directing one’s audience. For example, using sites such as Facebook, you could analyze niche markets such as gardeners clubs to better understand not only who your audience is, but the type of content they typically engage in. Next, it is time to grow and promote your brand by connecting with your audience through a campaign or through direct communication on sources like Twitter. In creating a marketing campaign, it is important to pay attention to engagement, views, and consumers’ comments. Another easy step to make as a marketer is to then follow people who are active with your content to keep consumers engaged with your content. Lastly, the article suggests providing continuous value. Despite having successful campaign ads or gaining more followers, social media marketing does not stop. You must produce steady content to maintain an interested audience over the long term in hopes to create longing relationships with consumers. By posting regularly you can also increase engagement and consistently send the message of the value of service your company provides. Using this material, marketers can modify their own content and be more successful at marketing online.

Sources: https://www.business2community.com/marketing/how-to-quickly-expand-your-social-marketing-presence-02185730

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Ecommerce and the Impact of Affiliate Marketing

March 26, 2019

On the Entrepreneur India, recently posted an article on March 24th titled, "Influencer and Affiliate Marketing" - How will it benefit the e-commerce industry?” The article explains the concept of ecommerce marketing, which relies on creating sales electronically by promoting a service, product, or brand. Many ecommerce sites function by creating a platform for users to buy products which are immediately sent from the wholesaler without having to hold inventory. Digital media influencers can play a direct role in ecommerce and subsequently, affiliate marketing. A lot of modern media consumption has shifted to online sources. Influencers on sites such as YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and Tumblr are all effective sources where opinion leaders can engage with consumers organically, having an influence on their purchasing behavior; this concept directly applies to the conversations held in class. This also relates to the concept of affiliate marketing, which describes how others promote businesses or products in exchange for a percentage of sales. This technique can help drive new audiences a business might not typically engage with and can be a more effective way of persuading consumers in terms of buying a product or supporting a cause. Ecommerce can be an effective way of selling products; as it states in the article, 72% of Instagram users make purchasing decisions based on products they have seen in their feed and 74% of millennials report that social media influences their shopping habits. Businesses need to adapt to consumer culture and continue to evolve in order to best market products or services to consumers.

Sources: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/331076

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Account Issues...

I am so sorry about the delayed posts for those of you who read my content. I have been having difficulties accessing this account, but have finally gotten it all squared away. I have continued to blog weekly, despite not being able to access my account and will post everything that I have created in the meantime.

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Search Engine Optimization- The Breakdown and Tips for 2019

In class, we began discussing the concept of SEO or search engine optimization, so I decided to dive a bit deeper to understand how this works and why this is important. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the term used to describe how a business can get better traffic through search engines such as Google, which is the leading search engine provider with 100 billion searches a month. According to Bluehost.com, over 94% of people using Google only use results on the first page of their search results and within this first page, the majority of people will typically choose results from the top three websites listed. This just shows the power of marketers optimizing search results. A websites position within Google’s search engine is determined by page rank. Page rank, contrary to popular belief, is not determined just by matching keywords; however, websites that are referred to often by other websites (backlinked) and the quality of a website’s content determines the relevancy of a website. Essentially, user-generated keywords are matched within a search engine to websites content to suggest if a website could be useful and backlinks determine Google’s trust for the content. In terms of optimizing search results, the on-site component of SEO is used to ensure a website is filled with keywords that are relevant to user-generated search words; the off-site component of SEO is geared to generating backlinks to your websites from other well-known sources such as social media, blog posts, etc.

Knowing this information, marketers can better optimize their website’s traffic. A recent article titled, “Why Social Media Marketing is Key for Search Engine Optimization” under the Business and Finance section of “TAPinto” goes more in-depth about the tips marketers can use to optimize their online website traffic in 2019. This article suggests that marketers should publish their website’s content onto many different external sources, which would fall into the off-site component of SEO. Websites such as Quora or Yelp can be used to gain brand awareness and are effective in getting people to interact with others about a company’s brand. In addition, marketers can link their website to high-quality content posted in other high traffic places to help build reputation for their website. The article goes on to suggest that social media platforms such as Instagram or Facebook are another useful source for posting content and creating exposure to a broad audience. Not only that, but Google often fetches data from social networking platforms so getting shares from other brands or people might appear in related search results. When I discussed earlier about backlinks from trustworthy sources, this article mentions the impact of getting mentioned from well-known publishers such as “Forbes” or “The Guardian” to assist one’s reputation and the authority of the website. Another concept which we discussed in class is the power of social media influencers. On platforms such as YouTube, well-known content creators can be used to create brand awareness about other businesses by giving candid information about a website or brand. Getting social media influencers to mention a brand’s website or inform users about a campaign is another way to increase visibility, gain a larger following, and create credibility for the brand. This is a very interesting article that is crucial to social media marketing as a whole because there are digital media marketing agencies which specialize in assisting small businesses in gaining more website traffic. Increasing website traffic through paid or unpaid mediums is a great way to gain brand-awareness which could lead to more potential customers and could potentially convert into sales.

Sources: https://www.tapinto.net/towns/lower-merion-and-narberth/articles/why-social-media-marketing-is-key-for-search-engine-optimization, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqg3F-8jBec

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Creating the Perfect Social Media Marketing Plan

In building a successful social media marketing plan, it is imperative to analyze the current marketing situation and identify key opportunities, state marketing objectives, choose a specific target audience, select a mix of the following social media zone strategies:

social community zones, social publishing zone, social entertainment zone, or social commerce zone,

create an encompassing strategy based on the zone selections, establish how to put the plan and objectives into action, and manage/measure the success of the plan (Dr. Chiang). This essentially provides an outline for a successful social media marketing plan. An article for “The Crypto Updates” titled, “How to Build a Social Media Marketing Strategy in 8 Easy Steps” by Kamy Anderson mentions some very important tips to be successful in your social media marketing goals. To create a good social engagement strategy, marketers should pay attention to who their customers are and what are their habits. By knowing who your audience is and by pinpointing what social media platforms they utilize such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, marketers can have an edge on tapping into various online resources to market to these specific demographics.  Diversification of advertisements is crucial, which is why it is necessary to research what social media channels are out there and what are their individual strength’s (see my first post for more information on this topic). Another great suggestion Anderson makes is to follow your competitors on social media. By getting insight into what other brands are doing in your space, allows marketers to better fine-tune their own strategies and ensure they have an edge over their competitors. In terms of managing and measuring the success of a social media marketing plan, marketers should pay attention to not only comments, likes, and re-shares but also how many leads are generated with each social media account; by paying attention to data such as ROIs (return on investment) you can optimize what social media tactics you should focus on going forward. Once a marketer has leads and new followers, keeping them engaged is crucial; once again, paying attention to competitors’ campaigns and continuing to reach out to customers through consistent posts is absolutely necessary in order to keep your marketing audience. When reaching out to customers, marketers can consider creating a social media calendar to plan out when the company will post campaign ads and when you will engage with customers on your activity feed. The last and more crucial tip this article offers is that results do not occur overnight. Consistent posts and consistent revisions are important to make sure that your business is constantly renovating in this marketing space. Keeping all of this information in mind is guaranteed to help marketers be more successful in 2019.

 Sources: Dr. Chiang’s Lecture Central Connecticut State University, https://www.thecryptoupdates.com/how-to-build-a-social-media-marketing-strategy-in-8-easy-steps/

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Facebook’s Privacy Issues Continue

In social media news, Facebook may have to pay a several billion dollar fine due to violating their own users’ privacy policy. The FTC has continued to investigate Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica investigation for using data that was supposed to be private. In addition, they have discussed ways in which they could regulate the platform as a public utility. CEO Mark Zuckerberg prior to this news story had been forced to give a briefing to Congress about how Facebook’s lack of privacy influenced the 2018 election. Two major problems Facebook dealt with back in 2018 is that Facebook had been using phone numbers from two-factor authentication alerts to target users with unwanted advertisements. But the more notable issue whose aftermath continues, it was released that Cambridge Analytica had improperly harvested the data of about 50 million vulnerable users for the purpose of political advertisements, which had a direct impact in the United States election. It was noted that Facebook even offered, “advertisers special access to users’ data and activities.” Mark Zuckerberg on behalf of Facebook has been dealing with the security breach in the form of a lawsuit for failing to protect the privacy of its users ever since. 

This information used to advertise to consumers without any awareness is commonly referred to as shadow information. People who use social media assume that their information will be kept safe with large corporations such as Facebook. Social media marketing can be a great source of brand awareness; however, privacy issues like these can really impact a platform’s user base. It has been estimated that Facebook lost another 2.1 million users this year. It will be interesting to see what other consequences Facebook will continue to have to deal with in the upcoming future. If Facebook does not continue to make changes to secure its platform, a greater decline in users could occur. It will be interesting to see what further news will come out of this case.

Sources: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/02/facebook-may-face-multi-billion-dollar-fine-for-cambridge-analytica-scandal/, https://venturebeat.com/2019/02/07/facebooks-esports-dreams-face-the-privacy-pr-nightmare/, https://www.marketingtechnews.net/news/2018/oct/01/facebook-has-been-rumbled-using-2fa-phone-numbers-ad-targeting/, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/14/facebook-privacy-problems-roundup

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Social Media’s Potential 2019

This infographic above shows the number of Instagram users in millions from January 2013 to April 2017, rising from only 90 million users to now 700 million. In the eyes of marketers, this growing population holds a lot of potential. While it can be difficult to gauge the overall impact of social media, it can be critical to getting a business’s name out to the average user. Marketers continue to see the upward potential for social media marketing which now accounts for 13.8% of marketers’ total budget. And with rising costs of ads, the question becomes where should marketers be focusing their efforts? Here is a breakdown of some of the most popular social media platforms:

Facebook is seemingly the most popular social media ad platform with an astounding user base; approximately, 68% of adults use the platform. With such a large user base, Facebook can be an excellent source for brand awareness and to help drive website traffic. In addition, with Facebook, marketers have access to specific demographics to help target ads based on gender, age, interests, etc.

Instagram is said to be the gold standard for visual content performance, as the platform’s main form of content is images with limited text. Instagram is home to 35% of all adults and continues to be on the rise with the younger generation. In addition, with the rise of story ads similar to that of Snapchat, has driven more advertisements to the platform. However, the cost per click (CPC) of Instagram is around double the cost of Facebook’s, ranging anywhere from 20 cents to $2 per click.

Twitter is the 4th most utilized social media platform reaching 335 million users halfway through 2018, with 45% of users being 18 to 24 years old. Twitter focuses on follower growth, brand awareness, and conversation objectives. This platform is extremely useful for users to contact directly with business owners.

Snapchat has more recently become a main source of communication for the younger generation. The updated interface of the platform dedicates an entire page to advertisements and popular social media influencers. A study from 2016 estimated that Snapchat gets 10 billion views a day. Snapchat is very different from the three sources mentioned above, however, can be a fun way for businesses to connect with target audiences and build brand awareness.

While this is only an analysis of four of the most popular media platforms, it is clear how much potential social media can have for business marketers with the benefits far outweighing the costs. It will be interesting to see what emerges in this space for 2019.

Sources:

http://www.businessofapps.com/data/instagram-statistics/,

https://www.skyword.com/contentstandard/marketing/where-to-focus-your-social-ad-reporting-efforts-in-2019/,

https://www.digital22.com/insights/benefits-of-using-snapchat-for-marketing

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First Post

I will be blogging here in order to create a portfolio of social media marketing content and news. Stay tuned for more posts!