#BlackFriday (Promoted by Target)

It's the perfect marriage. Target + Twitter = the perfect holiday advertising campaign!

Back in June, Twitter launched "Promoted Trends" which is when you hash-tag anything on Facebook (#christmas, #college, #roadrage). Literally, you can hash-tag anything you want, but it's only popular when multiple people are tweeting the same hash-tag. For example during the VMA's, #VMA was the most popular trend, during the 2010 elections, #ivoted was the most popular and the list goes on and on. But now with "Promoted Trends" you can purchase a hash-tag so it is automatically the top trend of the day or week, however long you want to financially back this trend. They launched this advertising feature because of the high demand from advertisers to utilize Twitter like Facebook Ads. And Target has taken one of the biggest jumps in this direction.


Target purchased the promoted trend #BlackFriday about 2 weeks ago in order to promote their biggest sale of the year! So not only does #BlackFriday show up as the "Top Trend" of the day for everyone's Twitter homepage, but Target is also the first tweet you will see when you click on the hash-tag. Target's tweet is the same every time you click on #BlackFriday and links you to their Black Friday Weekly Ad Book. Then following Target's tweet are real-time tweets from anyone that hash-tags #BlackFriday. When you click on Target, it directs you to their Twitter page which has been tweeting Black Friday specials and replying to those tweeting questions at them about Black Friday. They are highly engaged on their site which reflects excellent customer service and is building that brand loyalty for the consumer.

I think this was an extremely smart move by Target and a perfectly timed Twitter advertising campaign. #BlackFriday is the hottest topic on Twitter anyways, so why not take that to your advantage, which Target did. They are engaged in the conversation and expanding their consumer's conversation! Great job Target, see you at 4 am!

Welcome to your Social Inbox! -Facebook.

Today, our world is so technology driven with email, social media, iPhone, iPads, and the list goes on and on; it's hard to keep up with everything. Now, imagine a world where your text messages, personal email and Facebook chat/messages are all combined into one. This was thought impossible just a year ago, but Facebook has done it. They have made your life more convenient by introducing: the Social Inbox.

Finally a place where all of your conversations are organized in one place! Now instead of deciding whether to email, text or Facebook chat your friend, you can let them decide how they want to receive your message. It's absolutely brilliant! How is this possible you may ask?

1. Seamless Messaging. 

Like I said, your social inbox is a combination of email, text and chat all in real time. All you do is simply type in their name, send them your message and they receive it in whatever way is convenient for them. If they are on their phone, they can receive it via SMS. If they are on their Facebook, they will receive it in Messages. Now, you are probably wondering how SMS can be sent to your social inbox, trust me, I was curious too! On Facebook, you simply turn on the "Text Messaging" feature and you will be able to send the messages to your phone and/or receive them on your phone. The social inbox will also keep track of your conversation even if its all through SMS.

Here is an example from Facebook: 

Sending messages from your phone 

To send a new message to a friend via a mobile text, just text the following to 32665 (FBOOK): 

msg john smith what’s up? 

This would send the message "what's up?" to your friend John Smith. 

Pretty cool huh!

2. @facebook.com

Facebook is creating free email accounts for all members, by using their username@facebook.com. This is an optional feature, but by optimizing it, you will be able to email anyone in facebook or in your Gmail address book. However, it will not look like a typical email. This new social inbox does not have subject lines, cc or bcc and you simply send the message by hitting enter. It also filters your messages by the main inbox and "Other" file placing your conversations with those on Facebook into the main inbox and your bills, bank statements and converstations with those not on Facebook into "Other" file. If you want to place someone from the "Other" folder into the main inbox, you simply drag the message over and from then on all conversations will show up in the main inbox.

This has just started rolling out to Facebook users and will do so over the next 4-6 months until everyon has these features. If you want to learn more, check out the Facebook New Messages- Help Center, an open forum that will answer any other questions you may have!

Google has done it again!

Just when you think they have it all, Google goes and makes their site even more convenient. Introducing, Google Instant Previews. They have reinvented how you view search results, now allowing you to preview the link before leaving the google screen. I believe it is an exact copy of how the New Twitter homepage is designed. I absolutely love my new Twitter homepage and find it extremely useful and easy to use.

It will create a better user experience and make your search process speedier. When you click on the link, the screen will split in two and show you a screenshot/magnified look at what the link holds. It also highlights your search terms in the screenshot. And if your search term is not on the first page of the link, this Instant Preview feature will take you directly to where what you searched is.

 

The critics are saying this is an evolution in search engines and others will follow suit. However I disagree with this statement because Twitter is using the exact same format, so it makes sense for Google to use it as well. Regardless, I can't wait to use it!

Social Media + Election Day = Success

Today's elections have made history in the social media world. The use of social media to see who was winning greatly surpassed the use during the 2008 elections. However, I am not surprised by this fact because all day I have received tweets from @foxnews to keep me updated on the elections! And now as I write this blog, I have the fox news "live elections results map" pulled up on my computer screen too.

Not only has Twitter been blown up by over 20,000 tweets, but the two most popular hashtags of the day have been: #Election, #ivoted. The #Election hashtag was promoted by the Washington Post, but in reality  #ivoted has received far more attention due to it's combination with Foursquare and Facebook. I believe the combination of these three social media giants is the number one reason why today's elections have received the highest social media attention in history.

Foursquare created a check-in specifically for this election. You could check-in throughout the day from wherever you voted. This screen shot was taken at 11:40am and as you can see 50,098 people had checked in from 23,503 locations. Wow! It also breaks down this statistic by gender and location.

The Foursquare check-in was linked through Twitter, where one could tweet their check-in and receive an #ivoted badge. Then, this badge was also linked through Facebook. Immediately when you logged on today, on top of your mini-feed, you were asked: "Did you vote today?' If you answered you received a Vote badge on your facebook profile. That is what I love most about social media, how they all intertwine to create such an in-depth user experience.

Lastly, I found the Foursquare check-in comparable to when Twitter created the VMA Tracker that displayed who was receiving the highest tweets throughout the night. Both were smart moves because it allows the audience to be even more involved with their hobbies.

Congratulations Social Media, you truly won the election!

Introducing... the Starbucks Digital Network!

Starbucks is one of my favorite places to grab a coffee, meet up with friends or study for my next big test. It is my go-to place for comfort, relaxation and stability because I can honestly say that I have never had a bad experience there. And now, that great experience has gotten even better thanks to the introduction of the Starbucks Digital Network.



As you saw in the video, Starbucks has partnered with Yahoo to bring you the newest digital revelation that truly involves you in the Starbucks environment and experience. SDN is simply a personalized Starbucks home screen that not only provides news and updates around the world, but also in your neighborhood. The SDN essentially replaces your community bulletin board or newsletter by providing you all of the information in a faster and more convenient way. The SDN offers a variety of information from the following six categories: News, Entertainment, Welness, Business and Careers, My Neighborhood and the customer-personalized Starbucks channel. Starbucks has partnered with big businesses in each category ranging from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to music and apps from Apple iTunes, exclusive 30-day free trial of the LinkedIn premium account and local reviews from Zagat.


According to Starbucks Vice President of Digital Venue's, “Tens of millions of customers are coming in to our stores and logging in to our Wi-Fi on a monthly basis anyways. They’re coming in because we provide this great experience — good music overhead, quality food and coffee and the opportunity to connect with your friends or the baristas … What we hope is that this is a nice complement to that experience.”


Below is an example of what the home screen would look like:

Also, Starbucks recognizes the high use of internet on mobile phones and has made the SDN capable for phone users. And the best part is the SDN is absolutely 100% free. The only catch is you have to be at a Starbucks location to access the SDN. Yes there are 30-day trials for some of the businesses, but this is a very smart marketing tool on their end. I believe companies like LinkedIn will see an increase in their "premium account" users due to the free trial on the SDN. Plus, since Starbucks is putting their first priority on the localization of everyone's SDN, this will increase the users of Foursquare and other check-in applications. 


Personally, I am very excited for my next study session at Starbucks because of this new application. Not only is Starbucks on the cutting edge of the digital world, but they are greatly enhancing their customers relationship with their brand. Introducing the SDN at this time and being the first company to create a new level of personal connection to the brand, is definitely in the right direction for what the future of our digital world holds.

It's time to put on that cap & gown...

Last week, I was logging onto my Facebook for probably the 8th time of the day, when this advertisement popped up on the right-hand side of my profile. I recognized the artwork from posters all over Mass Media advertising photo week for the Talisman. Realizing that it was my senior year and last yearbook photo to ever be taken, I clicked on the advertisement to sign up for my picture. The ad took me directly to ouryear.com where I followed 3 quick and easy steps to sign up for my senior photo. 


I find it fascinating how geo-targeted this Facebook ad is and that it popped up nearly every time I clicked onto a different page. Not only was this advertising scheme extremely user friendly, but very smart for the Talisman staff. It is an issue every year to get students to take their yearbook photo, but making it as easy to sign up as logging into your Facebook, should definitely boost the amount of students who will be photographed this year. I honestly would never have signed up for at time or even gotten my photo taken if this ad wouldn't have been on Facebook. I told all of my roommates about it and helped them sign up via Facebook as well. One of my roommates said she never would have paid attention to the ad because she hadn't seen the poster around campus. Of course they all signed up and were impressed with how simple it was!


That being said, if you haven't taken your photo yet, log onto Facebook quick, Friday is the last day!

Everyone needs an iPhone. Seriously.

I have always been an Apple lover. iPods and MacBooks have been apart of my life since middle school. However, I have not yet jumped on the iPhone bandwagon. Yes, I know they have been out for 4 years now, but when it comes to cell phones I am always hesitant about the "hit new phone." But until this Fall I haven't had a burning desire to have one... and hopefully Christmas will bring me my very own iPhone.

While on fall break, I took a two-day roadtrip up to Chicago with a friend of mine to visit family and enjoy the city. Without her iPhone, we would have been lost on the drive up, in the city, and making our way back home. Not only that, but we wouldn't have been able to find the closest Walgreens, cheapest parking structure and Portillo's Hot Dogs. 

Maps was our best friend, leading us everywhere we needed to go. We walked all over the city thanks to our handy map. Before I would have taken the subway or hailed a cab, but this trip, being able to see how far our destination was, we decided to walk it out. Not only did Maps help us walk throughout the city, but it was also our GPS system in and out of Chicago. Not only was this tool extremely useful, but any question we had was immediately answered by Google. We were meeting my cousins for dinner one night and were able to look up the menu, location and reviews before even arriving. Another application "Around Me" showed you by category the closest restaurants, bars, shopping, restrooms, etc.

Basically, this trip absolutely sold me that I need an iPhone. It's everything and anything you can think of in the palm of your hand. Every piece of social media is available to you at the touch the screen. It amazes me that technology has advanced this far and we are able to literally have the world at our fingertips. Congratulations Apple for having the upper hand, I can't wait to see what they create next!

Move aside YouTube...

Vevo is the new site on the rise. Vevo is known as the "Music Evolution Revolution!" According to Mashable.com, Vevo came out on top for music video watchers, with YouTube in second place. Vevo was only launched last December and has 1.4 billion views per month. I believe this is an astounding number of views considering this site hasn't even been out for a year! Yes, YouTube does link music videos to Vevo, but those hits are directly from the Vevo.com site.

The main reason Vevo has so much popularity, is because they only play the official music video. Unlike YouTube, which gives you options for what video you would like to watch, Vevo automatically plays the music video and then shows related video's and artists.  Also, they rank daily the top videos and top playlists. Something that distinguishes Vevo from YouTube is the amount of specialty users Vevo attracts; it is more of a niche site than YouTube. Plus these niche users are able to access the content they want without searching for hours through YouTube.

I think this is a really interesting site that will continue to gain popularity and users. Now that I know more about it, I will definitely become a Vevo user!

Twitter Gets a Facelift

Twitter has decided to give its site a facelift by making its home page more user-friendly and easier to navigate. This photo on the left shows exactly what the new Twitter will look like once you log on. They decided to make it a split screen so don't have to navigate away from your live Twitter feed. Also, you will no longer have to click "more" at the end of your feed in order to see more tweets. Instead, it will just be a rolling feed of tweets that is constantly updated and never ending. You just scroll down as long as you like through your Twitter feed. 

The right side of the home page will be blank until you click on a tweet, link, mention, hashtag, photo or video off of your Twitter feed. The right side then magnifies the content you had clicked on from the left side. You will be able to scroll down the right side as well and see related tweets to the content you are viewing. Another cool feature is the "mini profiles." Instead of getting taken immediately to someone's profile when you click on their name, you are shown a small box with their number of followers, following, posts and their profile sentence with the option to view their full profile.

Now you're probably wondering where your "toolbar" went... Don't worry, Twitter did not get rid of it! It is now located along the top of your home page, making the page more streamlined. Also, the "search box" is moved to the top as well. And don't fret, Twitter isn't changing everyone's account overnight like Facebook does. It has started this week and will be spreading to users over the next few weeks. You do not have to use the new Twitter and will be given the option to go back to the old Twitter if you prefer. They will not have this option forever, only until everyone is familiar with the New Twitter and then it will become the only version. 

I believe this is very smart of Twitter because it will keep users happy since this new version is not forced upon them. I am very excited about this feature because it will be easier to view photo's and video's which I never would click on since it opened a new web page. Overall, I think Twitter is moving in the right direction with its new version for our extremely fast-paced society. Good job Twitter!

Funny story, just as I went to post this blog, Twitter asked me if I would like to try the new version... Of course! 

Every Shopaholic's Dream

I was inspired to write this blog after last class when we compared different bourbon Facebook pages. I thought to myself "what would I be interested in researching" and then it showed up right before my eyes: H&M popped up on my mini-feed. H&M is a swedish based fashion store with locations all over the world (it is one of my favorite places to shop even though the closest store is 5 hours away.)

Anyways, I dived into the Facebook page and was excited to see how engaged they are with their followers. Since this is an international company, the Facebook page is global as well. With over 3,600,000 million followers, fans around the world post their opinions, thoughts and idea's every few minutes and if anyone asks a question, H&M is quick to respond. You can customize your own H&M page, tag photo's of your H&M look, see upcoming events and store openings, and contact the customer service hotline directly from Facebook. My favorite part of their page is their competition among fashion blogs to win an exclusive video at the H&M fashion show of a new designer line. Not only is it very engaging for the consumer, but it really pulls in social media because you have to apply a widget to your blog in order to track the readership for the competition.

Speaking of social media, on the H&M website, there is a "social media room" where they have all of their social media tools linked to one source. The best way to describe it is that it's like a "mini Twitter feed" constantly being updated whenever anyone tweets @H&M , posts on their Facebook page, comments on their YouTube Channel or writes a blog post about H&M. This is a great marketing tool because H&M is so engaged in every aspect of social media that they should be. They didn't overdo it and try to grab a piece of every social media available, which is what most companies are doing. Instead they made very smart decisions to keep it simple and easy to manage. Plus, they understand that in today's fast paced world you have to keep up with your consumer which is why they jumped on the social media train as soon as possible. They just created an iPhone App which allows you too receive special offers and discounts because you are an "exclusive customer." I am very impressed with H&M and can't wait to see how they continue to utilize social media in the future.

VMA's Overload Twitter

I've been procrastinating this post because I hadn't sat down and figured out what I wanted to blog about. Well lucky for me, I came across this topic tonight, while watching the VMA's. MTV launched an app called the MTV VMA Twitter Tracker, it is a web-based, visual app that tracked trending topics live during the show. You were able to see how many tweets were posted per topic. Then, the topics are ranked according to how many tweets were posted, so the order was constantly changing.  Some of the top topics were #ladygaga, #justinbieber, #kanyewest, #taylorswift, and #vma. The top four topics were presented first with huge images of the artist and how many tweets per minute are coming through. Along the top of the app, you are able to view any of the 50 VMA topics and tweet live your opinions as well. Also, in the bottom left corner is a timeline to see how many tweets went through per minute and who at that exact time were the four top trending topics. Not only did this timeline build during the entire show, but it is still increasing even though the VMA's just started their first replay.

Throughout the show,  MTV kept TV audiences updated with how many tweets were coming through on Twitter. The hottest topic however, was in the very beginning of the show. Rihanna made a surprise appearance to sing "Love the Way you Lie" with Eminem as the VMA's opening performance. As soon as she stepped on stage, Twitter went over capacity due to more than 4,700 tweets per minute about #rihanna. As of right now there have been 2,059,418 tweets about the VMA's since they started at 7 p.m.,

I think this was a very smart move for MTV. Obviously, they appeal to a younger market, so incorporating what we know and use so well, really helped engage the audience. I was on Twitter during the show because I wanted to see everyone's opinion and catch up on what I missed in the beginning of the show. MTV's app is fascinating to me and definitely a breakthrough in the interweaving of online, mobile and television all into one social media event. It will be interesting to see if other networks follow suit and incorporate social media directly into their programming. It is a step in the right direction and a great solution to what the future of social media plus traditional media can create.

And 8 minutes later, there are now 2,097,783 tweets, with that number still rapidly increasing.

Welcome!

This blog is for my Marketing 420 class: Social Media Marketing. Over the next few months, I will be blogging about anything that strikes my interest concerning social media. Hope you find it interesting!