vKontakte, the Russian clone of Facebook, recently went international by translating the site into 22 languages. The only challenge now is for the company to get the same sort of international brand recognition that Facebook has obtained. With Facebook’s current dominance it is unlikely that vKontakte will get the same type of recognition, however that’s not stopping them from trying. The latest campaign I’ve seen took place in the comments of our blog.
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If you’re a large brand that’s running an online ad campaign are you just going to direct consumers to a pretty landing page? That’s what most companies have been doing consistently although a few brands have begun choosing to promote their Facebook and Twitter accounts over landing pages for the opportunity to “remarket” to their fans. Macy’s is the latest brand to promote their Facebook Page through display advertising campaigns around the web.
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YoVille, the popular Facebook virtual world, has partnered with MTV to help promote this weekend’s Video Music Awards. The campaign involves a number of integration points including custom MTV gear and items, a party at the virtual lounge “Sky Nightclub”, and an MTV VMA Room Contest. The promotion is one of the most integrated campaigns that we’ve seen on a Facebook virtual world and it’s a trend that we’d expect to continue.
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While simple display advertisements may not be the best form of ads, more interactive versions have emerged over the years that attempt to provide a more engaging experience for the consumer. Spongecell is the latest company to try to increase the level of engagement by providing display ads which include the ability to become a fan of the advertiser’s Facebook Page.
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Want to decide the next flavor of vitaminwater or contribute to designing the new bottle design? The program is being rolled out in three phases. The first phase is is the “flavor buzzmeter” which is tracking conversations from around the web to determine which flavors people are talking about. The second phase, which will being in the next two weeks, lets users vote on flavor that they’d like to see added to vitaminwater’s existing portfolio of drinks.
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With the surge in new branded digital media campaigns and programs we’ve decided to add a new component to this year’s Social Ad Summit being held in New York City and we’re calling it the “Social Times 25″. The Social Times 25 will showcase campaigns/programs that creatively and effectively leverage social technologies and digital media to increase engagement or achieve other marketing objectives. Over the past few weeks we’ve highlighted some of the campaigns and programs in this space but we don’t have time to acknowledge all of them.
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You run the marketing for a business of any size and you’re trying to figure out how to leverage Facebook to increase your reach and generate more sales. With so much buzz, Facebook is hard to ignore but many people have yet to figure out the most effective way for using the site to generate sales. After studying the ecosystem over the past two years, we’ve generated a few models that we think are most effective to marketing on the site. The model I’ll present today should assist in increasing sales no matter the resources.
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When Facebook fan pages launched last year, people rushed to lock up the names of large brands in the hopes that they could make a quick buck or get some free promotion. For most people the strategy hasn’t paid off. Fan page squatters are not the only people trying to profit from squatting on Facebook. Yesterday Brad Ward posted that he had found numerous incoming freshman groups were being squatted on as well and the company behind the squatting has the ironic name of “College Prowler”.
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Over the past week there has been a bunch of buzz about what essentially are Facebook marketing hacks; quick “guerilla” tactics that help boost exposure to your profile or brand. Whether you are a small business or a big business, there are some quick “tricks” that can instantly gain you more exposure. These Facebook marketing hacks are not encouraged by Facebook and ultimately, I would assume that Facebook will develop filters for people gaming the system.
This trick has been written about extensively over the past week. A couple weeks ago, Sam Lessin posted about the topic on Advertising Age. This Facebook hack is pretty straight forward. You simply upload a photo which has some sort of promotional value in addition to a photo description which can be used for promotional purposes. Proceed to tag your most influential friends (friends with the most contacts), and submit the photo.
Facebook places a high priority on photo tagging when it comes to news feed stories so this is a great way for getting promotion. As I said before, this is gaming the system though and Facebook will inevitably develop tools to monitor this type of activity. If you abuse Facebook tagging, you may not only begin to receive warnings from Facebook that your Facebook account will be deactivated, but you could also anger your friends.
Back in July I suggested that Facebook enable brands to tag photos with their brand which links to their brand page. While individuals may get frustrated with brands over-tagging photos, the brands also risk annoying their customer base and this will be a disincentive for photo tag spamming.
