Twitter has been a key player in the social media world and has been proven to be one of the best platforms for building awareness and increasing follower and brand engagement. Many Twitter users already follow their favourite brand, but what about those businesses they do not know about or are not aware of their Twitter existence?
Twitter advertising hosts several marketing products for companies and brands to help promote their businesses. Theses are promoted, accounts, promoted tweets and promoted trends. Full details on each product can be found directly on the Twitter business page.
Here are a few videos to visually explain how Twitter advertising works and benefits to a business:
Like any advertising product, Twitter advertising comes at a price. Costing companies roughly $150, 000 (in USA) to own a promoted trend topic for a day. Promoted tweets and accounts allows companies to appear at the top in most search results in Twitter or suggested lists to follow - this charges companies on the engagement, which are the number of clicks, retweets, favourites and replies.
Twitter advertising should be deemed as a marketing strategy. However, with the option to promote certain tweets, trends or account can add value to a public relations program but at a cost. Depending on the what companies need to communicate to the public about the brand, PR practitioners should not depend entirely on this strategy to engage with potential followers and/or customers. PR practitioners should weigh the value added by these promoted products and measure the return on investment.
Without a doubt, promoted tweets, accounts and trends fosters better brand awareness, engagement and loyalty. If properly used, PR practitioners can gain a favourable online community for their brand and be able to have direct connections with followers who are loyal to the brand. It is a great way to get in front of the public's eyes and "force" them to look at your tweet or generate curiousity around your promoted trend or account. However, good engagement and brand loyalty still requires excellent on-going relationship management. Using Twitter advertising to create awareness in the beginning is a great boost to kick start a campaign roll out but not entirely necessary to use frequently unless there is a campaign that needs to be communicated. In this article, 5 Proven Twitter Marketing Strategies, it provides good insight on how Twitter advertising should be executed properly.
Do you know where you are? Do your friends know where you are? Did you know that letting others know where you are eating, shopping, travelling, or walking your dog has changed how marketers are targeting us and how organizations and companies are now communicating with us?
Why don’t we understand this function better?
Location-based services is one of the newer social media tools and surprisingly, like myself, not many mobile users quite understand why it exists and why we feel the need to use that “check-in” function on our phones. I am an avid user of my smartphone and probably have accounts to 90% of all social media platforms out there, and I confidently say that location based services is still new to me. I use it to sporadically show my virtual friends the cool places I’ve eaten or obnoxiously make it seem I’m cultured because I’m at the Four Seasons Centre watching an opera.
But why don’t we understand this function better?
During our last lecture, we were graced by the presence of guest speaker, Jonathan Laba (@J_Lab), from BNOTIONS. He gave us more insight to location-based services – where it is now and where it’s going. Despite learning that there is a future for this service in how we interact with our surroundings, it was best to understand it at first hand.
So, I create my very own foursquare account but after that I thought “now what?” I played around with the app for a bit, understood what it was used for but still did not see the benefits to me. It wasn’t until I was at a park event that I got to understand foursquare more. Strolling down the path, I noticed Panago Pizza handed out free butter chicken pizzas along with a $5 off coupon. Naturally, free pizza was intriguing and after tasting theirs I was even more enticed to check out their nearest location.
Saving $5 later and waiting 12 minutes while it was cooking, I thought “Hey! I wonder if there are any specials for checking into this place?” Lo and behold, after checking in I was able to redeem another $5 off coupon because I was a first-time check-in! What a fantastic way to lure me into buying another pizza!
I’m a new user of foursquare so the excitement of this app was still new to me, however during class I learned that foursquare was probably eventually going to fade out into the graveyard of forgotten apps. I was saddened to be behind on this but I can see why the novelty has died.
I feel that foursquare is not utilized by businesses very well, unlike Facebook or Twitter. I have never seen prompts to use it when I walk into restaurants, stores or places that I check into, which I think is their downfall. Perhaps if they partnered up with a more popular social media tool that majority of the population use or partner up with “deal of the day” websites like Groupon or LivingSocial to better provide value to its users and also allow these discount e-commerce business gain more customers. Which has more value - QR codes or Mobile Visual Services?
Personally, I have never found true value or benefits in QR codes. I usually research something versus taking a picture of configuration of black blocks. However, I do appreciate how these can be used in a unique and creative way. Just like Jonathan Laba’s interesting game to get guests at a conference interactive. Also, learning that one of my Young Employee Network (Hewlett-Packard) board members is using QR codes in a similar way to promote our network in our office and leading them to our kick off by leaving QR codes around the building with trivia questions in them. QR codes can be valuable if used in the right way.
I was extremely impressed that Mobile Visual Services (MVS) exists, how much it has advanced and where it is going to take us in the future in terms of interacting with our surroundings. Apps like the Google Goggles is a fantastic tool to use with our everyday environment without much effort. It makes it more interesting to look up or research something but a click of a picture.
In general, humans are keener on visuals. When it comes to social media, MVS is definitely something PR practitioners should be keeping a look out on and how it can be used as another strategy to communicate with the public in a more visually interactive way.
Google Goggles Demo
Why we should embrace Location-based services? But be careful of our privacy.
Location-based service is an excellent tool for both marketing and social media. However, practitioners must understand how it can be value and use it in the right way. This is a great article on tips for successful location-based marketing Even though location-based marketing has been around for a few years, we can see that the popular social media platforms are now following the trend and seeing the value of using this tool. Twitter recently revamped their location-based marketing and Facebook included it in their mobile app as well. Here you can see the different types of location-based tools currently used and how they compare.
Source: http://kahlain.com/
But who is this really useful for? Customers? Users? Companies?
There is still a lot of work and research on how this tool can be a powerful marketing tool, which mutually benefits the end user and the companies who participate in it. I see this being a valuable tool for business who depend on customers walking into their establishments i.e. Restaurants, food/beverage shops and retails stores.
Location-based service is happening and we cannot avoid it. However, it is controversial when it comes to privacy. This shows use that the general public is aware of this tool but a large amount of them are concerned with privacy and would likely be more inclined to use the tool if they were able to control the privacy settings.
Source: http://whatdidericsay.com
Regardless our setting, we must always be careful with our privacy and safety. Be aware of what you share and know your limits for sharing.
With that, I leave you with another intelligent Google idea
I'm not new to the world of blogging, but I am excited to start a fresh blog focusing less on personal tidbits and photos of food, and more on the wonderful world of social media. I'm taking a great course at Ryerson University's Chang school of continuing education called Social Media in PR. What better way to learn about social media than to contribute to a blog every week on our thoughts and ideas?
Like most people, I primarily saw social media as a tool to keep connected with my social network in the most efficient way while being able to go about my day. We are inches away from our friends' lives just by checking our smartphones or logging on a computer and on to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. Only recently I have noticed the value of using these platforms to connect with my favourite brands, restaurants, artists, events and anything else to do with my specific interest. We live in a world that dumps plethora of information in front of us, which makes it increasingly difficult to sift through what actually matters or can be deemed valuable.
I am a huge advocate of social media. Getting back to my original reason as to why I use social media - connections. Connecting is key to social media. Without completing this course yet, I can immediately see that importance of making connections and building relationships via social media. Marketing strategies changes frequently to meet the trend of how society is. It is hard to avoid the fact that social media is crucial for building brands and gaining loyal customers. Social media is not a resource anyone can just start using without understanding its power. Unfortunately, many marketers do not leverage their social media platforms very well. In this article, 5 reasons social media is ruining marketing, mentions that marketers are "becoming lazy" and basically blast their marketing message without a strategy, without conversation and building that crucial relationship. The remainder of the article explains the ways in which to properly use these platforms to benefit the brand and objective of the company.
