Six seconds doesn’t seem like much time. For vine, this is all you need to collage together a series of snapshots into a quick video to share. The iPhone (and just recently added Android) app, Vine ,is still a fun novelty to many of its users yet the video-sharing app has quickly become a big entertainment network  and a serious tool for promoting your business. Fashion brands are the early adopters, with the likes of Burbury videoing their catwalk menswear collection at LCM using Vine and posting it to their Twitter community. A neat idea, simple functionality, Vine has all the right ingredients to become as big as instagram.

Facebook have begun to introduce hashtags for the first time on its social network – a forced adoption due to popularity, demand and competitor success (don’t let them tell you otherwise!) If you’re an avid user of the social network (who isn’t?) then you may have well already noticed several hashtags floating around.

Users will be able to search for a specific hashtag from the Facebook search bar and click on hashtags in posts (Instagram posts are integrated), thereby opening a feed where they’ll be able to contribute directly to the conversation.

Famous for its success on Twitter, implementation on Google+ and recent addition on LinkedIn, it may come as a surprise to many that Facebook have waited this long to introduce the popular social conversational tool –  especially considering its existence and usage on Instagram.

With the numerous privacy issues in the past, it’ll be interesting to see how they develop and integrate hashtags. At the moment, the user experience is clunky, and it’s obvious Facebook is playing catch-up.

 

 

Tug recently launched the Canadian arm to the business and on Thursday Nick Beck will be speaking at SES Toronto about Social Search.

Nick will be speaking alongside Michelle Ross who is CEO/Lead Consultant for Firestarter Social Media.

Developing an Integrated Social Search Strategy

Brands that seek performance from social media must embrace the dynamic between social and search. If search marketing is all about delivering value from consumer intent, social is about delivering value from consumer interest. Search marketers must understand the dynamic between search and social where interest begets intent and intent reinforces interest. This presentation will discuss:

• How to develop an integrated social-search strategy.
• Key points of crossover between search and social marketing.
• Ideas for achieving synergy and efficiency between both channels with actionable strategic frameworks.
• The importance of combined measurement and analytics strategy.
• Client examples from some of the world’s most revered brands.

Thursday 6th June, 2013 – As usual before going for lunch, I opened my Facebook page to see what’s going on and I noticed the following Facebook Ad:

I thought I couldn’t loose the opportunity to get in touch with her and see what she is like, as well as to find out more about her job interview strategy. Below, Kate answers some questions in her own words.

1) Hi Kate, tell us a little more about what you like and a couple of things you love about social media.

Well, first of all, social media is the fastest way to get new information, through the likes of Twitter.
Also social media provides a direct link between consumers and brands, which has never existed before.

2) There are a lot of candidates seeking jobs who have access to social media, so I really love your idea to stand out of the crowd, could you tell us a bit more about your job seeking strategy and what you are doing to gain exposure as a candidate?

Last year I was looking for a marketing internship without having much experience. Also, having studied politics, I was not necessarily the ideal candidate for a position in marketing and decided to find more creative ways of finding a job.
I saw one guy in the US using Facebook Ads to find a job and I also came across another girl on Twitter using #HireHannah to promote herself. I got inspired and decided to create a website “Hire Kate” and a Facebook Ad. Afterwards, things went really quickly and agencies started following me on Twitter and asked me to go for interviews.

This year I decided to use the same strategy but now I’m looking for a permanent job position. Also, later I’m thinking of adding some videos to the website as well, so potential employers can get to know me better.

3) Facebook Advertisement and targeting – who were you trying to target during your campaign and what are you looking for in your next employer?

I targeted people living in the UK between the ages of 26-54 with a degree. Then I used around 20 key words like “marketing,” “enterprise” and “advertising.”

I’m now looking to work for an advertising agency that works with tech brands or an actual tech brand. Later, I would really like to go into technology and learn to code, so working alongside these companies would allow me to see how the industry works.

4) Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions! Just leave us your best social media tips for our blog readers! 

The best tip is to just be yourself and be honest, and don’t afraid to be funny.

Feel free to get in touch with her @Kate_Bes

Good Luck with the Job Hunt!

Awesome ad by Giff Gaff, a new mobile network trying to show that different doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. Great brand positioning and good use of Youtube ads to bring the theme of friendly/ helpful zombies to life!

Hi, I’m Sabrina and I’ve just joined Tug’s Social Media Team. It is wonderful to be able to share my thoughts and findings on here, I hope you will enjoy them!

The importance of Social Media is now unarguable and for my first blog I want to discuss its ever-increasing influence on Fashion.

As we all know, in today’s online world a key step for a brand is to develop its social media activities, to be able to engage consumers. With regards to fashion, this is even more crucial. There are numerous ways to develop and support a brand’s social media strategy. In order to define and refine a brand’s identity it is essential to integrate all the marketing channels collectively. More than anything, brands must create Facebook and Twitter pages that resemble themselves. Their social media platforms must be mirrors of their brick-and-mortar stores and transactional websites and need to reflect their overall strategy.

Engaging the public with the brand is the main objective and this has been working very well for a few well-known fashion brands. In recent years Burberry had focused largely on social media, which is evident from their successes as one of the first true fashion brands to achieve 10 million likes on Facebook! That was back in 2012. They have now over 15 million likes (+ 50%).

 Its greatest competitive advantage in social media is its focus on content:

•    Burberry’s much anticipated and iconic catwalk shows are now streamed live on YouTube, Twitter & Facebook.
•    Their social media platforms are very rich in video content; they have accompanying music videos, ad campaigns and many interviews with key personnel like CCO, Christopher Bailey.

High End & Luxury Fashion labels are now trying to catch up, the link between Burberry’s successes and pioneering campaigns incorporating Social Media are a testimony to their power.

Currently, Burberry is a leader in social media for luxury fashion but it will be interesting to see if they will remain on top. Let’s see how they perform against their competitors such as Gucci, LV or Dior in the next few months.

Source: http://www.socialnomics.net/2013/03/18/fashions-love-affair-with-social-media/

Nothing to do with digital marketing whatsoever – well, not strictly speaking. This is part of an exercise to determine what kind of online content gets shared the most by internet users and makes them engage in conversations. For this exercise, I have chosen a sensationalist video which shows…well, you just have to watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=poOLo8yDGyI

So what do we think? Real or fake?

Liked this blog post? Why not Like us on Facebook too?

Don’t be offended by the title now, as a glasses wearer myself, I am merely referring to the bespectacled future of search that is ‘Google Glass’ and the technologies that are being developed for it!

Back in March, our Social Media Director Ben posted about how Google’s Project Glass and Apple’s wristwatch mobile device are set to compare in terms of consumers’ views on the future of mobile connected devices and the route that they are likely to go down. These stats showed that a massive 45% of early adopters preferred the idea of Google Glass over Apple’s wristwatch device, meaning that the majority of us obviously prefer the Cyborg look as opposed to International Spy! Nevertheless, it got me thinking… when you consider how users of these devices may interact with them in their day to day lives, the difference in usability does actually start to become a little more fathomable. Well, a clever techie from Los Angeles (Drew Baumann, Founding Engineer of FullScreen) has developed an app that illustrates exactly this.

Baumann, with the help of his pal Andrew Skotzko, has developed a Facebook app for Google Glass called ThroughGlass. The app gives users the opportunity to create status messages and comments on Facebook without the use of fingers or thumbs or even the need to surreptitiously raise an arm to speak into a watch like James Bond might do. Instead, users can just say what’s on their mind and their comment will be posted directly to Facebook (only those you wish to of course!). Baumann found that voice commands for Glass, or any other mobile device for that matter, are only useful for utility purposes like asking for directions or carrying out a search. What ThroughGlass has been developed to do is to simply take a user’s comment, straight from the horse’s mouth so to speak, and place it directly onto Facebook whilst then allowing them to see in real-time the likes and comments that are received from their friends. Cool huh?

I will leave it up to you to interpret exactly how useful this app might be in everyday social situations but one thing is for sure, the future certainly does look interesting!

 

Regardless of your thoughts on the success (or flaws) of Google+ the new features announced at Google I/O 2013 have definitely changed the way the social network operates. The platform now boasts a sizeable 190m monthly active users and Google has integrated many of its products and features into the network to bring everything together.

The news feed is now three-columned stream of posts and has interactive animations all over the place. Google says that the stream was flat, so it needed a fresh take.

Hangouts are a big focus, releasing an app for iOS, Android and desktop. It has video and text chats, complete with emoji and presence. Google knows that people want to talk to friends and family using technology like Whatsapp and Snapchat, so the logic is that if it can integrate features to facilitate your communication from anywhere — desk, phone, tablet etc. — then you are covered.

The audience response to the changes has been quite immediate, the streaming of news feed is proving to be an either love it or hate it fix.

 

Neat social media content aggregator Vizify brings together your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Foursquare data to paint a biography of your digital self. The graphics are nice, the layout is slick and iPad-friendly and creates a neat digital business card you can tie to a blog or website that gives people a quick introduction to your career, education, experience and content: https://www.vizify.com/