Facebook is diving into the interest graph with Interest Lists, a Twitter-like tool that Facebook says can help users “turn Facebook into your own personalized newspaper.”
“Interest Lists” …allow users to make mini-newsfeeds that include the status updates, posts, pictures and stories only from the people and pages a user has added to a certain topical or “interest” list.
The trend among social platforms to adopt interest graph features is most valuable to marketers, even more so than the social graph. Here, Facebook is taking after Twitter and 140 Proof as it starts to emphasize interests over connections.
This post is part of our series The 7 Essential Elements of an Award-Winning Paid Social Campaign.
#2: Involve the Audience.
In social, ads no longer travel one-way to the audience. A winning paid social campaign capitalizes on the two-way nature of social and gets the audience talking.
Get people to talk to the brand and thus trust it a little more. When people respond to a brand in social, they buy into the possibility that the brand cares about its customers.
Request opinions by asking great questions.
To promote its selection of smartphones, Best Buy asked people on Twitter, “Do you have a friend who’s ashamed of their smartless phone?” That simple question generated a torrent of replies from people outing their friends for owning brick and flip phones. Best Buy’s Phone Shame campaign ran well before social ad campaign awards were invented, but they’d be a serious contender if the campaign ran today.
Ask people to share the brand message.
Awards show judges expect a successful social ad campaign to be shared. Copy quality counts: people prefer witty or bold creative that makes them feel smart for sharing. While social ads by definition have sharing features built in, some campaigns will benefit from explicitly asking users to share the creative. A word of warning: offering an incentive, e.g. by running a contest that requires retweets, wins big engagement but not necessarily awards. Choose wisely.
Encourage people to create content for the brand.
Chevrolet went the extra mile to promote their new Cruze compact car, and in 2011 they went to bat with the fans of prime time TV hit Glee. Chevrolet tapped the social stream to find the most fanatical Gleeks, who submitted their own versions of the classic Chevrolet song “See the USA.”
Ask for different things at different points in the campaign, too. For example, for a campaign building up buzz for an event like the Oscars, the brand could ask users to generate content during the teaser campaign (“Invent our Oscars hashtag”), ask for retweets before the event starts to increase awareness, and keep the audience engaged during the broadcast by asking for opinions during the awards show.
Always consider the nature of the medium. In social, this means acknowledging and encouraging ongoing conversation with customers.
Next, read about Element 3: Nail Mobile
This post is part of our series The 7 Essential Elements of an Award-Winning Paid Social Campaign.
#1: Own an Event.
Take advantage of the natural excitement that builds in social in advance of a major event — whether it’s a televised award show, a sports championship, or a major holiday. Get in front of the customer with a relevant message just when buzz peaks.
ESPN won iMedia’s Campaign of the Year by blitzing social media in advance of the 2011 NFL Draft, making the most of football fans’ excitement that the long-delayed draft had finally arrived. ESPN’s ads on Twitter and Facebook earned them 7 new followers a second and performance 67% above the average social advertising campaign.
There are three ways to choose the right time for a brand campaign:
1. Sponsor a major annual event, or tag along for the ride. Big brands can get in front of affluent consumers by sponsoring a televised event and touting the connection. However, a younger brand like a mobile app startup can take advantage of buzz without sponsorship — for example, make a splash alongside the latest Apple keynote by choosing the right Twitter and Facebook media to get the message out.
2. Time the promotion to the buying rhythms and the context of your customer. If your target customer is the 19 year old college student, should your big social push be at end of summer, when students prepare to return to school, or are you the european vacation company that makes its promotions around graduation time?
3. Respond with lightning speed to unexpected events. For example, political teams are expert at responding to current events, and they can use social advertising to magnify their message and shape public opinion.
Performance counts, and perfect timing makes a campaign a better success story for awards show judges.
Next read about Element 2: Get the Audience Involved
Brands’ hunger for great social advertising is growing, and with increasing popularity come industry awards. Now that social is no longer the province of experimental teams working with small budgets and wild ideas, more shops are paying attention to who’s doing great work in social.
But even though the social category is heating up, shops haven’t yet picked up the pace on submissions. For example, many Shorty Awards categories have only one or two competitors. This year presents a perfect opportunity — Cannes Lions, Shorty, Mashable, Webby, Bees, and more are looking for great paid social campaigns to honor. But what does it take to create a great campaign in social?
At 140 Proof, we’ve overseen hundreds of paid campaigns in social for brands like Nike, Levi’s, and Coca-Cola. In March, we’ll be presenting the 7 essential elements of an award-winning campaign in social:
Element 1: Own an Event
Element 2: Involve the Audience
Element 3: Nail Mobile
Element 4: Write Social Creative
Element 5: Choose Your Moment
Element 6: Make the Virtual Tangible
Element 7: Get Your Hands Dirty
What do you think the most valuable part of this series is? Let us know in the comments.
We stopped by General Assembly in New York to visit friends at some of the seed-stage startups incubating there. Amazing, inspirational space. Stay tuned for a longer post on our visits to the IPG Media Lab, coming soon, and see you all in Austin this week at our panel, Epic Battle: Creativity vs Discipline! 9:30 AM, RISE AND SHINE, friends!
Live sports events are one of the fastest-growing areas in social — all major US sports leagues (plus the worldwide soccer community) are doubling down on social. And with evidence building that social media drives TV watching, sports marketers that depend on TV viewership have even more incentive to reach Twitter users.
But how can a sports marketer expand reach in social to stay competitive? John Manoogian III explored three game-changing Twitter tactics and drilled down to the basics of the paid social campaign for sports marketers.
Here are three ways to use paid media to reach engaged fans on Twitter during a sporting event:
1. Target connected fans. Make sure your paid media campaigns during a real-time sporting event targets the super-fans who actively tweet and retweet and have thousands of followers. By targeting your campaigns to these fans, they will in turn share with their followers — spreading your campaign for you.
2. Link to the ‘second screen.’ Extend TV commercials and paid video campaigns to Twitter by launching a social ad campaign targeting viewers of a particular sporting event. Ensure a continuous message from screen to screen, so paid Twitter ads reflect and extend on the commercials and video you run before and during the game.
3. Own an event. Go all out and target your campaign to a mega-audience during a key event. For example, Chevrolet spent big to target all Twitter users following @superbowl and @nfl for 48 hours. As a result of this “play big” strategy, Chevrolet emerged as the Social Media Brand Champion of the 2012 Super Bowl, attaining the highest mindshare on social media of all the brands that advertised during the game.
Live sporting events are a unique opportunity for brand marketers to engage directly with core demographics while they’re excited, amped up, and plugged into one of their favorite activities. And Twitter is the perfect social stream to connect with fans in real-time. With a little ingenuity and some strategic paid advertising, marketers can connect with fans on Twitter during the game to build long-lasting brand recall and affinity.
Read more on Mediapost: How To Reach Sports Fans On Twitter - Live
Advertising in the social ecosystem offers presidential candidates bigger results than tweeting and Facebooking alone. Mainstream media is already asking: how big a role will social ads play in the 2012 presidential election?
To create this infographic about the 2012 landscape for political advertising, 140 Proof’s Data Team reviewed data from the 2004 and 2008 elections as well as recent reporting from AdAge, Adweek, and eMarketer.
About 140 Proof
140 Proof offers simple, powerful advertising in the social ecosystem’s top 50 apps. Our ads are targeted via the interest graph and reach over 200 million US users monthly. To adapt your campaign for social and learn how political teams are using 140 Proof to win, email us at sales@140proof.com.
We’re pleased to announce a new option for brand advertisers who are taking advantage of the power of social. Our new, in-app social video ad unit gives brands a powerful new way to drive views and engagement around their videos in social.
Given the rise of social as a second screen for television and the explosion of video in the mobile space, 140 Proof video ad units are positioned to increase engagement around videos and capture the buzz the video campaigns generate.
So what makes the new ad unit so exciting, and why will it be effective for brands?
Like the company’s existing 140-character text units, the videos can show up in the social stream of any app running 140 Proof ads (and yes, they should work on mobile). Users should be able to click and watch the video without leaving the page, rate it, and bring up a feed of all the tweets mentioning the advertiser’s hashtag.
140 Proof CEO Jon Elvekrog (@jonelvekrog):
Our data show that a large percentage of social stream ads include a link to a video. Brands can boost engagement around their videos by creating a rich, native viewing experience that is totally integrated into the consumer’s use of the app and doesn’t take them away from the social stream.
140 Proof CTO John Manoogian (@jm3):
The new video ad unit lets brands get more value out of that expensive 30-second TV commercial that lots of viewers aren’t seeing, since they’re now watching shows on Tivo or Hulu or (ahem) BitTorrent. The social video ad unit lets brands reach those users in a context where they are already looking for ‘the next big thing.’
The new 140 Proof in-app social video ad unit includes:
- Creation and hosting of a customized video viewing experience;
- A state-of-the-art HTML5 Video Player that allows consumers to watch the video from the page;
- An In-App Video Rating widget consumers can use to rate the video within the page;
- A Discussion widget that creates a feed of all tweets referencing the client’s hashtags.
To find out how to integrate social video into your campaigns, get in touch with us at hello@140proof.com.
Read more on TechCrunch: 140 Proof Introduces Video to Its Social Ad Network
