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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
December 4, 2016 12:40 AM
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2016 has been a crazy year for social media. A near three-fourths of users are getting their social media fixes via mobile, Twitter is making moves to sell, and Snapchat has unleashed bots that want to use your eyes to create content. But considering the other social media storms we’ve seen over the past year, the fake news story is perhaps the least understood. Critics have spent hours debating the effect these sites had on voters during the election, while Facebook scrambles to filter out these stories under pressure from its users. What few people are talking about, however, is how impressive it is that these websites were able to appear out of utter obscurity, take over newsfeeds, and drive enormous traffic while competing with considerably larger, better funded, and comparatively more reputable media giants. This is a technical feat that many marketers would love to emulate, but it comes wrapped in unethical practices and short-sighted tactics that don’t fit for the overwhelming majority of brands. If we’re able to peel back the layers of deceit, is there anything left for respectable marketers to take away?...
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
December 3, 2016 11:28 AM
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We now know that there’s been high growth in engagement with video on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram this year, as platforms adapt their preferred formats, and users change their social media habits. Many publishers and content creators have put a lot of resources into making more video, often with decent results. But there’s one key consideration for video producers here: the number of people watching your videos on their phone is likely to be the majority of the overall total. So what can you do to appeal to mobile viewers of social video, and grow that vital segment of your audience? From looking at some of the best examples in Spike, here are our three tips for making sure your social videos are appealing to your mobile videos as much as possible....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
December 3, 2016 1:19 AM
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Graduations, Weddings, Births, Holidays, Star Wars … yawn. Let’s get to the good stuff for the coming year that’s going to shape your marketing strategy. Here are three major social media trends you absolutely shouldn't be overlooking in 2017....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
December 2, 2016 11:52 PM
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"We understand that the environment is changing inextricably, but what do we do now to prepare for this new reality?”
I had become so accustomed to describing the changes in content consumption and its implications for marketers, media companies, and tech-enabled content platforms that I was taken aback.
The nods among her team made it abundantly clear that “what now?” was more than a theoretical question, and one that needed to be addressed ASAP.
Thus, herewith are five practical predictions on the future of digital advertising creativity and real-world recommendations on what to do now to prepare....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
December 2, 2016 11:34 PM
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In honor of the people doing their best to make functional adults, Minute Maid has launched "The Holiday Store with Nothing to Sell." At this paradoxical little pop-up, crammed with sparkly snowflakes and light-drenched Christmas trees, kids walk in and write letters to their parents while sipping on orange juice. (Hemingway would cringe.) The letters are boxed up and wrapped in pale green paper. In the video below, watch five kids reflect on their letters, and the parents' reactions upon opening the gifts.
"She's gonna probably have a confused kinda look," one daughter predicts. "She's gonna think it's maybe, like, a ring, or a bracelet...?"
But no, it will be none of those things!...
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
December 2, 2016 4:34 AM
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Below you’ll find nine steps that fast-casual restaurant chain Qdoba Mexican Eats took when engaging the YouTube audience for the first time. The results were phenomenal (and, in full disclosure, delivered under the direction of, as well as executed by digital marketing agency Evolve!, Inc.). If you’re planning on diving into YouTube to help grow your business, use this campaign as a model – it delivered 3 million views, 84K social engagements, and 200M potential impressions, all while adhering to strict brand guidelines and beating aggressive price targets....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
December 2, 2016 4:08 AM
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With a recent surge towards mobile browsing and cool new design options like parallax scrolling, the web has seen millions of websites receive facelifts over the past few years. It has also led to a lot of poor web design choices that prevent consumers from fully connecting with brands. From unattractive homepages to weak content, poor navigation, and countless errors, there are a number of things that the average website can improve on. Below, you’ll find the top ten most common web design mistakes and how to keep them from hurting your site’s overall engagement....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
December 2, 2016 3:21 AM
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A lot of eyes are going to be on your website in the upcoming weeks. A National Retail Foundation survey found that more than 56% of holiday shoppers will purchase gifts online. What's more, almost 80% of shoppers are heading to the internet to research gifts, even if they end up actually purchasing the item in-store. Those numbers are only going up. The smartest marketers will prepare for this not only by prepping their website for higher-than-normal traffic and optimizing it for mobile devices, but also by giving their website design a dose of holiday cheer. It all starts with the homepage: The first page many people will see when they come to your website. How have other companies redesigned their homepages for the holidays? Let's take a look....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
November 30, 2016 11:19 PM
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The thing to remember with any type of social media automation is that you will still have to spend some time on social media.
Whether you are replying to a customer or commenting on another person’s post, the human factor still has to be there.
With the social media world going mobile, interaction is always important.
But for those things you can automate, let’s have a look at some of the best social media automation tools available. These tools will help save you time and can do a few other things to make your life easier too.
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
November 30, 2016 10:53 PM
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Online, your product is unbundled. You get 10 words. Or 8. Or maybe 13, like I used above, to market your work. Digital success is like selling a newspaper story by story rather than day by day or week by week. And in selling that day’s paper, by subscription or newsstand, there’s just less urgency to make the headline awesome on that 150-word story buried at the bottom of page 11. Sections and geographic centers all are comfortable assumptions you can’t make in digital headlines. You must have a certain sense of desperation in writing web headlines, like those eight words are the difference between that column’s or blog’s life or death. Mostly, because it is. You aren’t owed readership. Your headline helps earn it — along with a handful of other factors like author and brand.
So any strategy involving growing and sustaining digital audience must incorporate excellence in headline writing. Must.
A few points to clarify here as we begin. I’ll be discussing writing for readers here, not for search engine optimization. That will be a consideration at times, but mostly we’re talking about people creating headlines for people....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
November 30, 2016 10:14 PM
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Someone once told me that most PowerPoint presentations have neither power nor a point. I cannot recollect, in 30 years of work, a single PowerPoint presentation I saw or gave that altered the course of anything. Yet in meeting after meeting around the world, PowerPoint is the medium of choice. In fact, according to Microsoft, there are over 30 million PowerPoint presentations given every day.
When someone chooses to use PowerPoint or any other slide deck program, the choice has consequences. It establishes a power structure that is less relevant in today’s networked world, with the subject matter expert speaking at the front of the room and the audience passively receiving information. It keeps teams indoors, in closed rooms, in a seated position for prolonged periods which, as Mayo Clinic reports, increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and shortens life expectancy. And, most unfortunate, PowerPoint places technology at the center of the room with a heavy weight toward text, charts, sound bites, and bullet points.
When I helped start a social innovation organization called Civilla, in partnership with Adam and Lena Selzer, we gave ourselves an operating constraint: There would be no PowerPoint. None.
But saying no to something is easy. Figuring out what takes its place is harder....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
November 30, 2016 8:19 PM
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Since Election Day, President-elect Donald J. Trump has proposed a U-turn in American diplomatic relations with Cuba, boasted about negotiations with a major manufacturer, trumpeted false claims about millions of illegal votes and hinted that he might upend current free speech laws by banning flag burning.
All in 140 characters or less.
As news organizations grapple with covering a commander in chief unlike any other, Mr. Trump’s Twitter account — a bully pulpit, propaganda weapon and attention magnet all rolled into one — has quickly emerged as a fresh journalistic challenge and a source of lively debate.
How to cover a president’s pronouncements when they are both provocative and maddeningly vague? Does an early-morning tweet amount to a planned shift in American policy? Should news outlets, as some readers argue, ignore clearly untrue tweets, rather than amplify falsehoods further?...
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
November 30, 2016 11:26 AM
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It may seem like you’re hearing the same holiday songs being played over and over again during the holiday season, and you are. The top 10 most-played holiday songs make up less than 1% of the total library, but garner 19% of the airplay. So, who tops the holiday music charts? And how do sales and on-demand streaming differ? Although new artists are reproducing their own versions of classic holiday tunes while creating new ones as well, the charts seem to have a fondness for the classics, as they continue to top the charts. During the holiday season, stations that switch to all-holiday are out with the new and in with the old. Adele, who’s song “Hello” typically tops the chart for U.S.-based AC stations, said goodbye to her ranking during the 2015 holiday season when Mariah Carey’s rendition of “All I Want For Christmas Is You” took over. Mariah’s song, which is now more than 20 years old, also ranked the highest in the number of streams, with approximately 44 million on-demand streams during the 2015 holiday period.
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
December 3, 2016 1:10 PM
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Is your company ready for the new year? The Borenstein Group shartes the Top 10 digital marketing trends you need to know now to be ready for a happy 2017.
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
December 3, 2016 1:29 AM
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Twitter is a fascinating adventure of relationships, entertainment, education, and fun. Now imagine layering on a few dozen power-ups. That’s how it feels sometimes when you find just the right Twitter tool. And there’s a tool for practically every desire or whim. Tools for productivity, for efficiency, for research, and so much more. With such a generous API, Twitter tools have become legion—and we social sharers are better off for it. At Buffer, we tend to come across a fair share of social media tools. We’ve collected a great bunch to share with you! Here are all the tools we’ve found helpful and many more that we’re excited to try. If there’s a free Twitter tool out there, you’re likely to find a mention here in our list. ...
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
December 2, 2016 11:59 PM
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It’s not a surprise Facebook and Google have stayed ahead of everyone else. The two platforms have focused on two key areas: personalizing advertising and those mobile trends we just examined.
Last month, Facebook announced that they have a billion mobile-only users -- not a billion users of the mobile app, but a billion people for whom the entire Facebook experience takes place on mobile. Google has invested its vast resources into mobile search, and in May 2015, more than 18 months ago, it said that “More Google searches take place on mobile devices than on computers in 10 countries including the US and Japan.”
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
December 2, 2016 11:41 PM
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I've lived and breathed and thought about this space every single day, and here's the sad conclusion I've arrived at: digital display advertising doesn't work.
I think it's safe to say that digital display advertising has never lived up to the promise and the hype. Since the very beginning, advertisers have been obsessed with finding ways to get people to click on their ads. They've worked with an array of ad creation platforms and embraced programmatic methods so that the right ads get in front of the right people, and yet the click-through average across all platforms and methodologies is .06 percent.
This means that for every 1,000 times an ad is shown, it is clicked on only .6 times. This means that for the average digital display campaign to get a single click, it needs to be served 1,800 times....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
December 2, 2016 11:26 PM
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Caleb Warren, assistant professor of marketing in the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management and lead author of the research, conducted a series of experiments that found different ads can be equally humorous to consumers but have very different effects on brand attitudes, depending on the type of humor used.
The research is based on the concept that people find humor in “benign violations” — that is, material that somehow threatens their sense of well-being, personal identity or beliefs, but in a harmless or inconsequential way. For example, a comical Reebok ad featuring an “office linebacker” tackling other office workers represents a benign violation, because viewers know the violence is staged and no one is actually being hurt.
But even benign violations can cross a line, according to the research, which explored the effects of “mild” versus “severe” benign violations on brand attitudes. According to Warren, advertisers should stay away from ads that feature highly inappropriate humor, humor with a specific target or “butt of the joke,” and humor that prompts avoidance by eliciting feelings such as disgust in addition to laughter....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
December 2, 2016 4:22 AM
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I’ve dedicated a great deal of time to understand how it works, what works best and how to utilize the power of Twitter. In my experience, Twitter is one of the best platforms to grow a following and converting them to subscribers and leads through lead magnets. The best part is that using these lead generation techniques doesn’t have to cost you a dime!...
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
December 2, 2016 3:46 AM
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Like all business, those in the real estate realm should be seeking uniqueness, clarity and memorability in their branding. So how do you go beyond the overused and generic images of houses, skyscrapers and rooftops? We’ve got 22 great creative examples of people who got creative with their real estate, property and mortgage company logos.
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
December 2, 2016 3:04 AM
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Christmas, the Olympics/ Paralympics and OK Go. Those are three reliable buckets for great advertising, and they all show up in Unruly's new list of the most shared ads of 2016. The top spot on this year's list goes to a Christmas spot; No. 2 was made for the Paralympics; and OK Go put two videos on the list, including one at No. 5. Ads from 10 different countries appearing on this list, Unruly says—the U.K., U.S., Denmark, Egypt, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Norway, the Philippines and Indonesia. The average runtime for the top 20 videos is 2:49. "Video advertising has once again reflected the wants and needs of society and offered a powerful route to escapism for consumers," said Ian Forrester, global vp of insight at Unruly.
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
November 30, 2016 11:11 PM
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We can’t all be J.K. Rowling or Stephenie Meyer, but if you’re working on a book, it’s nice to know what helps with success.
First, don’t get too long-winded: Surprisingly, the average length of a best-selling book is 375 pages. (Lord of the Rings is definitely an outlier here.)
As far as setting goes, most bestselling books are set in the U.S., with lawyers or detectives as main characters. Romance is, by far, the most lucrative genre. Romance books bring in $1.4 billion a year, with crime books in second place. Interestingly enough, people finish romance novels but often ditch religious books.
While the U.S. leads for its publishing industry, Germany, France, China, Japan and the UK also have large markets for authors. If you’re publishing an e-book, Amazon might be the best bet –– the company controls more than half of the e-book market. Authors also get to keep 70 percent of what they make on Amazon....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
November 30, 2016 10:30 PM
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The 2016 election exposed a significant crisis for U.S. democracy: the failure of our news media system.
This was an election in which false news was consumed as if true; in which polls were significantly off-base; in which journalists missed the stories both of Trump supporters, who came out in unanticipated numbers, and former Obama voters, who defied predictions to stay home.
The easy response, in the wake of these multiple failures, is to focus on one specific weakness. If only journalists had interviewed more white people in the Rust Belt! If only pollsters had looked at a different data-set! If only Facebook were not so dominant, or fake news sites so plentiful…
Such essays in search of simple answers represent no more than collective wishful thinking. Systemic failures have systemic causes. Repairs to the system may not be enough. We need to put time and resources now into transforming our news media system.
Why did we not know that voters in the Rust Belt were willing to vote for an anti-regulation racist populist, even when doing so might go against their values and self-interests? Likewise, why did news organizations fail to anticipate what appears to be a lower turnout of black voters in North Carolina (with its new voter suppression laws)?
It’s not that journalists in those communities were not doing their job; it’s that there are very few journalists left to tell the stories of those communities....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
November 30, 2016 8:50 PM
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Some MIT faculty, led by Roger Levy and Nancy Kanwisher, posted a short message regarding what they believe in the wake of Donald Trump’s election. More than 400 faculty have now signed it. As an MIT alumnus, I read this statement and wondered about the platitudes it contains: why make this statement, and why ask faculty to sign it? The answers may make you uneasy.
The platitudes in this statement are problematic
The 233-word statement is well-written and direct — it’s free of jargon, passive voice, and weasel words. If you think only about the words, it seems clear and effective. But its filled with platitudes nobody disagrees with. The fact that these faculty need to make statements of this kind says a lot about them, and the times we live in. I’ve appended my comments in italic....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
November 30, 2016 11:35 AM
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In the U.K. study in 2015, nearly two-thirds of children aged 0-17s read (or were read to) for pleasure on a weekly basis, with two in five doing so daily, and nearly all doing so at least sometimes. However, the proportion of kids 0-17 reading weekly had fallen by 1% point year-over-year since 2014 and was 7% points lower than in 2012. The decrease was seen among girls as well as boys and was most marked among kids aged 3-10, dropping the most for boys aged 8-10. For the first time in 2016, the annual U.S. survey also looked at the proportion of children reading (or being read to) for pleasure. On a daily basis, just over half of those aged 0-12 and only one in five teens were doing so, but an encouraging 82% of children read on a weekly basis and nearly half of all teens. In fact, on a weekly basis, reading was the third most popular activity for 0-12 year olds (with watching TV at number one). For teens, reading as a leisure activity was in 11th place, well behind such activities as social networking, watching YouTube, watching TV, playing games on smartphones/tablets and playing games online or on a console. Despite the ubiquity of digital reading devices (over 80% of American children have access to a smartphone and/or computer in their household, and over half have access to a tablet device), only around one in five 0-17 year olds in the U.S. are currently using smartphones for e-reading, with a third of 0-12s and two in five teens e-reading on tablets. The U.K. saw similar levels of e-reading in 2015, with 14% of 0-17s using a smartphone and 31% using a tablet—despite much higher proportions (79%) having tablet access in the U.K. than in the U.S....
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From the recent fake news stories issues, are there tips that ethical content marketers can use to develop a successful content and SEO strategy? Seems so.