10 Social Media PR Lessons From #OITNB

Looking to connect, bond and create brand advocates? You might learn a social media lesson or 10 from the hashtag #OITNB.

The Netflix original television series, "Orange is the New Black", has more than its recent 12 Emmy nominations to brag about.

The show's social media team, fans and cast do a breakthrough job at publicizing the steamy side of women's prison and building relationships, engagements, interactions and advocacy that borderline's addiction – between the show, the characters, and audience.

Survey Says Social Media News Goes From Vice to Habit

Social media has become a powerful, effective, and cost-efficient news distribution network for organizations of all sizes.

In a recent TekGroup social media news survey; 37 percent of respondents confessed they are hooked on social media about 1 to 2 hours a day and are using tools habitually with almost 90 percent saying they use Twitter, Facebook, and blogs on a daily basis to follow and monitor a brand's news and information.

So as social media transitions from vice to habit and content marketing bubbles up as the next marketing drug, I mean strategy, of choice, what's the right prescription for your brand?

How Brands Like #OITNB Keep Fans Hooked Via Social

With the big push in content marketing and the use of social media as a commonplace tactic for brands, rising above the clutter is becoming a challenge, but with a little creativity, any size brand can steal some social media inspiration from shows like "Orange is the New Black".

"Multichannel storytelling talk is pretty commonplace these days, but finding great examples of brands doing this well can be tough to find because the reality is it's pretty hard to pull off," said Lisa Grimm, director of social and public relations for Space150.

"OITNB is among those doing a nice job extending its popular women's prison Netflix TV drama into digital with stellar content, distribution and conversation with its growing base of rabid fans," Grimm said.

Do you have to be a sexy TV show to pull off a magnetic social media campaign? Absolutely not. But it helps to have a quality product or service. Your social media marketing and public relations can't make up for holes in customer service, product fails and weak business models.

"OINTB is guilty of savvy social media marketing," said Kristi Kellogg, content writer at Bruce Clay Inc. "The evidence doesn't lie – one look at their Twitter feed proves the community managers are conspiring to engage their vast audience with photos, videos and memorable one-liners. Furthermore, OINTB is inciting rampant OINTB-related hashtag use and consorting with fans in branded Twitter chats (#AskOrange)."

10 Easy SMM Lessons From #OITNB1. Use Hashtags With Meaning, Power, Purpose

17 Keys to Success in Social PPC

If you haven't jumped on the social PPC bandwagon yet, it's time you gave it some serious thought. While social PPC won't replace Google AdWords any time soon, it's become an effective source of incremental leads and sales for savvy businesses.

What follows are 17 keys to running successful social PPC campaigns. The first four apply to all social PPC, then we'll talk about keys to success for each major social PPC engine.

Social PPC Keys to Success1. Identify Your Target Audience

In search, the target audience is "anyone who searches using my keywords." In social, much more thought must be put into the people and personas you'd like to reach. Are they consumers? Business owners? Teenagers? What do they like to do? Where do they work, shop, play?

Defining your audience is critical to success in social PPC.

2. Identify the Marketing Challenge That Paid Social Solves

Think about why you want to use paid social in the first place. Are you active organically in social media, but need a larger or more engaged audience? Are you struggling to reach a B2B audience because consumers also search on your keywords? Do you need awareness of your product, service, or company?

All of these can be great reasons to use paid social – the key is to think about what problem social PPC will solve for you.

3. Define Your Paid Social Strategy and Objectives

If you've done the first two steps, this will be easy.

If your audience is B2B decision makers, and your objective is lead generation, then you'll want to define your strategy and objectives as such. If your goal is audience growth, build that in to your strategy.

Mapping strategy out ahead of time sets you up for good results.

4. Segment Your Audience Based on How You'll be Posting

This is an overlooked and yet important part of social PPC setup.

It isn't unusual for advertisers to have multiple segments within their target audience. You might have different types of businesses that you want to reach, or you may be targeting both men and women, for example.

Look at your current social posts to see what audience they're intended to reach – and then set up your social PPC campaigns accordingly.

LinkedIn Keys to Success5. Carefully Identify Your Target Companies and Job Levels

LinkedIn's targeting optionsare great for targeting individuals at specific companies and job levels; it's especially effective for B2B. But think carefully about how you want to target.

Do you want narrow targeting with specific job titles and companies, or do you want to cast a wider net and focus on categories rather than specifics?

Be especially careful about seniority targeting. If you need to reach decision-makers, you'll probably want to exclude entry level people. But be aware that the higher level you target, the higher your minimum CPC will be.

6. Be Ready to Pay $5

3 Ways to Extend Your Products Into Social This Holiday

If you ask retail marketers where they will be sending their product feed this holiday season, nearly all of them will say Google Product Listings Ads (PLA). Many will list off comparison shopping engines (CSEs) like Shopzilla, Shopping.com, and The Find, or online marketplaces like Ebay, Amazon, and Sears.

Most retail marketers, however, won't list social shopping sites like Pinterest and Polyvore. Given those sites' increasing contribution to brand and product discovery, they represent a huge revenue opportunity for retailers this holiday season. In fact, Pinterest alone drives nearly 6 percent of social referral traffic, according to Shareaholic.

Many social sites already do accept retail product feeds through offerings such as Pinterest Rich Pins and Polyvore for Brands and Retailers. However as of this summer very few retailers are incorporating their feeds into these programs.

A recent study showed that only 1.7 percent of retail products merchandised in PLA were represented in social commerce on sites such as Pinterest, Polyvore, and Wanelo. Additionally, the study also highlighted that when product listings are incorporated into social, the content itself is often not updated to influence and engage a shopper that is in ‘discovery' mode.

There are a few reasons why there is a gap between the opportunity to merchandise in social sites and the adoption within retailers, outside of standard pre-holiday inertia towards the tried and true.

There is separation between brand and ecommerce teams, with brand teams typically owning social media and little to no budget allocated for testing social ecommerce.There is a definite lack of awareness of the expanding toolset available for ecommerce via social channels, both in terms of rich, informative, and sometimes promoted posts as well as in analytics.Retailers who have minimal resources dedicated toward social commerce find themselves in a classic chicken-and-egg dilemma since optimization resources won't be realized without a dedication to the effort.

There a few key things that retailers can do this holiday season to overcome the challenges listed above and incorporate their products more comprehensively into rapidly emerging social channels.

1. Recognize That Social is a Branding and Commerce Opportunity

These types of programs can be mutually beneficial to brand managers and performance marketers alike. Brand marketers want to make sure their presence and messages tell a story in social channels.

These programs, Rich Pins especially, allow for the addition of a commerce experience without the loss of branding value. This should help to break down organizational silos that prevent collaboration today.

2. Keep It Simple: Focus on Your Top Products Initially

It doesn't require a feed wizard or a robust feed management technology to make these programs work for you. At the very least, a retailer's top products should be in all oft-visited channels as consumers travel between discovery and shop modes.

Using sales data from PLA can help retailers find their most engaging products such that they can ensure those are represented in social programs. Additionally, the products that have been Pinned, saved, or liked in social already can enable better decisions on what products and messages to highlight in search and PLA campaigns.

3. Use Search Data to Drive Social Merchandising Decisions

From years of search query data, retailers can determine what colors, styles, and materials are driving traffic and sales. Armed with that knowledge, retailers will have a good sense of what to profile in product titles, descriptions, and images that they publish to social channels.

Summary

We're witnessing a huge change in consumer shopping behavior as many purchase decisions are now influenced by online peers in social shopping channels. As retailers are start to look for ways to incorporate their offerings into these sites in an authentic way, selecting the right products from feeds and highlighting their best qualities is a great way to start.

How to Create a Social Media Friendly Landing Page

Landing page optimization continues to be a growing conundrum for many brands, especially when you throw social media communities into the mix. Community managers can create great little posts that entice and pique the curiosity of friends and fans.

We demonstrate every day that we can drive traffic from social media channels to brand sites, but those visitors tend to browse more than buy. We love them for browsing, but is there something we could do to get our browsing friends to commit?

Be honest, you have pockets of social media connections that do the very same thing. They love to engage with you in their favorite social media space. They come to visit your site often, but they browse a while, read a blog post, and wander off to the next shiny thing that attracts their attention.

Could the problem lie with where they land on the site when they come to visit? There often seems to be a disconnect between social media communication and website development. The same psychology that applies to crafting an engaging social media post should apply to the pages those posts lead to.

Social Media Mindset

Your brand's social media audience is easily distracted. The more obvious you make the call to action, the more likely they are to take that action.

That simplicity doesn't change when you move them from their favorite social channel to your website. If you direct them to a page that is full of options and cool shiny things, they are more likely to browse and never make a decision.

If you want your social media friends and fans to watch a video, download a tool, or sign up for an email list, you have to make it super simple to do. That is the job of the landing page.

Landing Pages That Fit the Channel

Each social channel, whether it's Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, Twitter, or Google

Want to Measure Social ROI? Start with These 5 Cross-Channel Metrics

by Uri Bar-Joseph,August 4, 2014Comments

In a recent Gigaom survey, 52 percent of responders stated that, "It's difficult to prove ROI for social media marketing." ROI, specifically social ROI, has been a point of contention ever since the term "social media" started surfacing in the marketing circles, dating as far back as 2007-2008.

Why, after almost a decade, doesn't social media measurement have a solution for measuring ROI? Why is social ROI still such a major challenge?