What content would be meaningful for my brand’s audience?

Brand managers dabbling in the new age social media might have realized that social media is very demanding. Instead of putting a few months of energies to create one 30-second ad-spot, they are having to think of meaningful communications for their brand – on a daily basis – facebook posts, tweets, pins and the works!

A simple lesson from the best marketer of them all, David Ogilvy, would be of help. Create posts which transcend product benefits and are value-adding to the lives of people. No, we are not talking of value adding products. The reference here is that marketing itself should be value adding – only then today’s discerning consumers might choose to pay attention. Much before the advent of social media, and perhaps even TV, here is a David Ogilvy print ad for Guinness, the popular beer brand. Whats your takeaway?

Interactive Infographic: Developmental milestones for babies

An easy guide developed by GenY Medium for a leading parenting website.

Hashtags for retailing

The latest in retailing could use twitter and other social platforms and make it even more easier for us to shop. We are evolving as shoppers (and fast!) to move away from queues at the billing counter, to online shopping are e-stores, to simply texting to shop!

Watch what American Express has done with its new Amex Sync initiative! Game changer? Perhaps the beginning of one.

 

Congress has no option but to move to social media!

The latest from Congress Party’s ‘Chintan Shivir’: There is a feeling within the party that it is losing connect with the Indian youth. More importantly, BJP has a huge lead in this area as a result of its effort of the last 4-5 years.

Social media was widely used for the US Presidential elections in 2012 and closer home, Narendra Modi used social media effectively to win his straight 3rd election fighting all forms of anti-incumbency.

Watch this NDTV debate to see how social media is hogging limelight from a very unlikely class of people – our politicians!

 

Search + Social – The holy grail is here!

Facebook has recently announced the “Graph Search” feature, launching it in ‘Beta’ mode.

To quote: “Graph Search will appear as a bigger search bar at the top of each page. When you search for something, that search not only determines the set of results you get, but also serves as a title for the page. You can edit the title – and in doing so create your own custom view of the content you and your friends have shared on Facebook.”

Enjoy the video which lucidly explains the concept. The search + social phenomena was started by Google+ and is here to stay!

 

#AfricaTweets – GDP vs. Tweets!

A close look at this Economist’s infograph would show the correlation between economic prosperity and # of tweets!

Ruling the twitter buzz is South Africa, followed by Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt and Morocco.

Here’s GenY Medium, wishing all you people more $$$s and more tweets!

Content marketing is king!

A recent feature article in Ernst & Young’s publication, “Performance“, talks about the importance of ‘Content Marketing’ in today’s context.

The contention (and accurately so) is that the advent of the internet and more importantly platforms such as Facebook & Google+ have made sharing of personalized content and insights effortless. This has had a far reaching effect on the importance of content in marketing. Some of the important points worth highlighting are here:

• “In the battle for consumer attention, businesses that offer their customers compelling, high-quality content generally enjoy greater brand awareness and increased sales.”  - Rachel Fielding, author of the article
• “There’s a movement toward thinking about what customers need rather than pushing messages out to them to encourage them to buy.” – [says Antony Mayfield, author of Me and my Web Shadow and founder of digital strategy firm Brilliant Noise]
• A 2012 Content Marketing Institute (CMI) report revealed that 60% of business decision-makers said branded content helped them make better purchase decisions
• 61% of consumers were more likely to buy from companies that offer customized content
• Companies that fail to invest in creating useful and unique content are in danger of becoming less visible on search engine results that favor “rich” over “thin” content

Say no to tobacco. Lead a healthy life!

Expedia viral campaign – Rajini vs. Chuck Norris

Latest viral from Expedia. Very subtle!

The real lessons learnt from our ‘samosa eating experience’

We always wonder whether putting out good, humorous content on facebook can help increase our fan base. How much can we expect from one content piece in the ideal case? Most importantly, whats the ROI of good content on facebook?

GenY Medium did a little experiment, although inadvertently, which answers some of these questions. A simple facebook post to start a series called: “Social Media Explained.” became a run away viral, garnering over 500 likes, over 600 shares and indirectly leading to over 50 likes!

The impact

• Weekly reach of the page grew 131x.
• 111x more people were ‘talking about’ the page.
• More importantly page likes grew ~50% over a period of 2-3 days!

One content piece impacted the popularity and acceptance of the page significantly – More fans were added in 2-3 days as compared to the past 2-3 months! The content itself was immensely popular with over 600 shares! The content piece had 500+ likes, implying that 10% of the content likes actually led to page likes as well.

ROI

The implication of the getting a like is akin to acquiring a qualified lead. The cost of lead acquisition varies from industry to industry. For GenY Medium’s industry, lead acquisition rates might be $20-30/lead or so. Therefore, 50 likes would transform into $1000-$1500 return. The investment? 30 minutes of creative input! $2000-3000/hour is a great return on the creative effort!

Take away

A well thought through content strategy can lead to very economical lead generation directly translating into an attractive ROI – perhaps much better than search marketing!