Brandcasting Archives

November 23, 2012 By Brandsplat Leave a Comment

Five Things You Might Have Missed!

Even on Black Friday, we dish out the best online marketing news stories in our Five Things You Might Have Missed list. Tricky Twitter innovations, a Butterball-bashing viral hit and so much more are piled high on today’s plate. So pull up a chair and dig into our leftover-free buffet!

1.) Serve with Gin & Juice: Topping the list this week is a ridiculous-yet-viral treat of online video creation from Hot Pockets. “Pocket Like It’s Hot” is a music video style commercial featuring Snoop Dogg and a parody of his 2004 hit “Drop it Like It’s Hot.” With lyrics like “When the craving’s got a hold of you… Pocket like it’s hot… Pocket like it’s hot” and a video filled with hilarious hip hop swagger, it’s hard to believe it took Hot Pockets this long to use Snoop as a spokesperson. The timing must’ve been just right, however. The clip has already racked up over 6 million views in just under a week.

2.) Picture this: If you missed the rollout of yet another cool Twitter upgrade this week, you’re not alone. Fact is, Twitter seems to release some sort of nifty app or innovation nearly every week. This week, the company announced that it would now offer an image search which allows users to search for hashtagged images, signaling the brand’s bid to be considered a social image sharing network, too (a la Instagram). For Twitter marketing specialists, this makes finding image-rich tweets even easier and opens the doors for creative photo-centric campaigns.

3.) Black Friday Bungle: Every year, at least one big brand royally screws up an online Black Friday promotion. This year, the title for Biggest Online Marketing Screw-ups goes to Sears. Thanks largely to a time zone setting disaster, Sears had to send thousands of “oops!” emails to its early shoppers, who thought they could get their hands on a 32-inch TV for just $97 bucks and before Black Friday. Only problem is that most Sears didn’t have the TVs yet, leaving online customers in the lurch until their transactions could get cancelled, which could take days. All was made worse by some bad social media PR which tried to clear up the mess but just made people more angry. The whole fiasco is a great reminder for marketers to keep holiday deals super easy and to use social media to actually be helpful and sympathetic.

4.) Side Dish of ‘Mercy:’ WARNING! Do not watch the ButterballAbuse.com video that’s been going around if you are sensitive to violence against animals. Yet this viral campaign strongly illustrates how powerful online videos can be when perfectly timed. The clip, produced by Mercy for Animals, has received major national notice and jump-started a new discussion about animal compassion.

5.) Sandy Stories: We round out this week’s list with the amazing way that Hurricane Sandy survivors are using storytelling app Backspaces. Backspaces is an app that inspires users to click photos and tell the stories of their lives as they unfold. Sandy Stories have popped up by the thousands on Backspaces, with photos of folks helping out communities affected by devastating storm. It’s an inspiring trend to see non-profits and regular old folk alike using smartphone sharing for the collective (feel) good of mankind.

August 17, 2009 By splatter 1 Comment

Brandcasting. How social networking can increase your brand image. (Part 6 of 7).

When social networking first came on the scene with sites like Myspace, many people viewed it as technology meant for younger, tech savvy users who want to have a common digital space where they can chat, exchange music, share information and do just like teens do in Europe in their local town squares. This was an ideal solution for towns across America that didn’t have a town square; a digital piazza was the perfect solution. As time went on, it was clear that something more powerful was forming on the horizon. Sites like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin have soon become “virtual piazzas” for much broader ranges of users that include adults, professionals and now, businesses. As I have written about in a previous micro blogging post, businesses now have the power to broadcast deals and offers to loyal customers via micro-blogging. Think of how Kmart used “blue light specials” in their stores to create a loyal following of shoppers. Now businesses can do the same without the corny spinning blue light and they can reach far beyond the confines of their brick and mortar store space. But don’t think that just because you are tweeting deals to your audience that the dollars will start rolling in. You have to have a strategy. To get started, Twitter does a nice job of explaining how the power of micro blogging can help businesses of all sizes. For the novice, I have written a post detailing how to get started with Twitter here. The subject of using social networking is a huge one, so we will just scratch the surface by offering up a few tips for the novice micro blogger.

Micro Blogging Tips

1. Keep “˜em coming back for more. Offering incentives and special deals on an ongoing basis will keep your audience engaged and willing to follow your micro blog. Also, give-aways and promotions work well in growing your audience and keeping your loyalists happy.

2.Â Manage your online reputation. Because micro blogging is a social medium, anyone can have a voice. That means that you may receive negative feedback from your customers in a public format. Always address negative comments and if you can, look for ways to turn those negative comments around in your favor by offering a solution or a “make-good” for that customer. While many will agree that there is no such thing as bad PR, there is such a thing as a bad brand reputation and anything you can do to snub negativity can help in the long run and may even turn a sour situation into a sweet marketing win.

3. Bond with your fans. Social media allows you to have back and forth conversations with your most loyal customers in a public format. Always invite your fans to have a platform and create a healthy exchange with your brand. Who knows, you may discover your version of Subway Jared, Subway’s spokesperson who was one of its most loyal fans.

Again, we are just scratching the surface here. Micro blogging can be time consuming yet rewarding if you do it right. It’s up to you to do research for the best micro blogging techniques that fits your marketing strategy for your business. For a better handle on micro blogging, I recommend looking to other businesses that are similar to yours, how-to books and online resources like Twitter. Be sure to check back for tomorrow’s post, the final part of a seven part series. As they say in the local piazza, ciao.

August 13, 2009 By splatter Leave a Comment

Brandcasting. Article marketing goes a long way. (Part 4 of 7).

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When you market yourself as an expert in any field, chances are that people will want to buy from you. An excellent way to do this is to write articles and about your industry then distribute them both online and in print publications. Both Ezines and print publications are hungry for fresh content, so submitting a good article to them is a win-win situation; they get fresh content and you get exposure. Keep in mind that it’s very important that your content is engaging and informative so that readers will seek your articles out and publishers (ezines and print publications) will come back to you again and again for that golden content. Article marketing can really establish a lasting footprint online for your brand because useful information tends to have a longer shelf life. Articles should be in-depth and informative and rely less on opinion and more on facts. Here are some simple guidelines to help you get your articles the attention you seek.

“¢Â How-to’s are great subject matter when creating an article. A succinct list that explains how something is done in a step-by-step manner can be an enticing read. For example, say someone bought a low-quality “widget” from a competitor and you write an article on how to make a high quality “widget” in a step-by-step format. First, the reader will feel empowered with the knowledge of what makes a great widget and may use that knowledge to question the competitor. Secondly, you become the quality “widget” master in that person’s mind and the next time they’re in the market to buy a quality widget, they just may think of buying from you.

“¢Â Make good use of the resource or bio section under the articles you write. The submission box appears after your article and is where you can promote your brand as well as offer contact information for the author of the article. You should include a short bio and a link back to your main site and blog. If your content is good enough, you can be sure people will click on your links thus increasing your website and blog visibility.

“¢Â Use keywords in your articles that are similar to the ones you’re using on your main site. Remember that SEO expert you hired when you built your website? You can use that same keyword strategy with your articles too. This will help your search engine rankings when your articles are linked back to your main site. Good thing you hired that SEO expert, right?

“¢Â Publish your articles to submission sites and have them distribute your content. Submission sites collect articles and also allow for you to add a bio-section at the end of your articles that can link back to your brand site or your blog. A few of the more popular ones are ezinearticles , Â Â goarticles , thephantomwriters and buzzle.Â To find the best fit for you, do a search for online article marketing distribution and you’ll find lots of options to choose from.

Want to read more on article marketing, visit my article on the subject by visiting this link

August 11, 2009 By splatter 1 Comment

Brandcasting. Build a strong and SEO-friendly site. (Part 2 of 7)

Having a branded website is the first step for getting online visibility. Think of your website as the foundation of a house or a base camp. Every element of your Brandcasting campaign will link back to your branded website.Â Your website is an extension to your brand, so make sure you build it right the first time.

When building a website, consider having three experts on hand:

1) An SEO expert. While employing an SEO expert can be expensive, it really is the foundation of a good Brandcasting strategy and is worth the cost. But do your homework first. There are some SEO solutions that promise you way more than they can deliver. If you want to know what to avoid when choosing an SEO expert, click here.

2)Â A solid programmer who understands SEO and SEM. I can’t tell you how many times clients come to us with websites with broken links, absent meta tags or are built entirely in flash and are literally un-findable by search engines. Clients then proceed to tell us that they hired a professional designer. Some coders are not aware of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Search Engine Marketing (SEM). If ever there’s a time to hire the experts, now would be it.

3) A knowledgeable designer who builds sites for a living. Make sure you choose a designer who has a working knowledge of what good design means for both a human and a web crawling bot. For example, you may want to make sure your content is text instead of images to get the best optimization for your site. That happens on the design level and a good User Interface (UI) designer will know that. If you want to go it alone on the designing of your site, solutions like Lynda.com offer how-to videos that can be an affordable, albeit a time consuming option. However, I would not suggest taking on programming or SEO work yourself if you have no background or knowledge of either field.

Here are some things to keep in mind when building your main site.

“¢ Make sure your site is well designed, easy to navigate and is structurally sound. This is where a good coder and designer can pay dividends in the future. Keep in mind that it’s not enough to look good to the human eye. Your website must be sexy to a web crawler too. For example, it’s very important to make sure all your links work. If they don’t, web crawlers may stop at a broken link and may never see all the great content you have past that one link. Not sexy. Another thing you may want to consider doing is to have a site map that lays your entire site out in simple HTML code. Sexy, sexy.

“¢ Update content on your website often. The more often you have new content on your site, the more often bots will crawl it thus increasing your website’s visibility and rankings on search engines. If your content is refreshed daily, web crawling bots will visit your site more often. Placing articles or daily blog posts on your site are some of the most common ways to offer up daily content.

“¢ Have a keyword strategy. Having good keywords can make or break an online branding campaign. Having keywords built right into your URL can mean added optimization. For example, if one of your top keywords is “widgets” , it might not be a bad idea to name your site “widgetsforless.com” or some URL with the keyword worked into it. Again, you can see how having a strategy upfront can have implications for the life of your brand in the long run, so it’s always a good idea to get an SEO expert involved from the get-go.

“¢Â Position your brand. Doing a competitive analysis of keywords can help you level the playing field within your industry. Positioning your brand with keywords can mean helping get your site the right kind of traffic. If you are selling widgets, for example, you want to focus keywords around the words that people who are searching to buy widgets are most likely to use. That makes sense, right? A good SEO expert can help you determine what keywords people use when they are looking for your goods and services. Having a list of the right keywords will help you be more findable when searched for. Also, sprinkling your keywords in all forms of content that you release on the Internet will help you rank higher for those keywords and can be a great way to build links back to your main site.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk about different forms of content that can help kick-start your Brandcasting campaign.

August 10, 2009 By splatter 2 Comments

Brandcasting. How to give your brand a boost online (Part 1 of 7).

This week, I’m going to try something different by offering up a seven part series on Brandcasting : what it is and how it can help your brand. Today’s post will cover the definition of Brandcasting and ensuing posts will cover Brandcasting strategies that you can implement to help build your business online. Keep in mind that the information that I will cover is just scratching the surface and is meant to be a starter-kit for anyone who may consider Brandcasting for their business.

So what is Brandcasting? Brandcasting is the act of spreading informative and relevant content throughout the digital stratosphere in order to create a wide footprint for your brand in a cost effective and powerful way. Content may include articles, blogging, social media, video and any kind of content that can be indexed by a web crawler like Googlebot . The best way to get the word out on your company’s goods and services online is by creating and distributing content about the industry your business is in. For example, if you make widgets, you want to create content based on subject matter directly related to widgets (i.e., hot to make them, how to sell them, what makes a good widget, wooden widgets vs. plastic, etc.) Brandcasting will not only make your brand more findable on the Internet, but it can organically increase your ranking on search engines and make you appear to be the expert in your field.Â Any size business, small, medium or large, can put Brandcasting to work with a minimal investment of time and money.Â One benefit of Brandcasting allows smaller businesses to compete with bigger businesses that may not have the wherewithal to have an online branding strategy. Brandcasting can be a powerful and affordable way to market a business and attract customers via relevant content. Here is how Brandcasting can be most effective; when potential customers are ready to buy, they usually do some research on what they are buying. With Brandcasting, potential customers have a greater probability of interacting with your brand if you have multiple points of content on the Internet. Brandcasting is not a gimmick, nor does it offer immediate results. Brandcasting takes patience, foresight and good old-fashioned hard work. If you’re looking for a quick fix marketing strategy, this is not it. Plan on dedicating a good amount of time and effort to build your Brandcasting empire and be prepared to map out multiple strategies as you go. In the next post, we’ll discuss the first and one of the most important strategies for a brand; building an SEO friendly website.

June 19, 2009 By splatter Leave a Comment

When slow growth gives way to slow death.

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I’ve been privy to working with big brands that were making the transition from the brick and mortar world to e-commerce. In the B2B sector, clients were always very afraid of pissing off their sales channel, VARS (Value-Added Resellers) and third-party dealers who were pushing their products and services. The thinking was, if they upset those channels, their sales would take a hit and they might loose some valuable partnerships which means lower sales. But consider the speed at which change happens on the internet and you’ll soon realize a slow approach to supporting your online efforts could put your business in the slow lane, or worse, standing still in the emergency lane. When you consider a story about how Dell earned $3 million through their Twitter strategy in less than 24 months, (nobody had even heard of Twitter 24 months ago) you start to see just how fast results can happen. A recent Mediapost article states, “by easing towards online at a safe, incremental rate because you’re mitigating risk to your core business, you’re allowing your critical mass of customers to get in front of you. Whenever a mass of customers is underserviced, someone will fill that gap, and you can bet it will be a nimble, online pure play that’s moving at light speed compared to you.” I agree. Smart businesses are realizing the power and speed of implementing targeted strategies and aren’t afraid to allocate resources to solidify their leadership position online. More companies are brandcasting and migrating their budgets toward SEO and SEM campaigns. But most are not. If you haven’t seen a threat from a competitor who is putting more effort online, then either you’re just lucky, or you’re moving too slow to seem them whiz by.

June 11, 2009 By splatter Leave a Comment

How B2B companies can play the content development game.

Over the years as an ad man I have had the good fortune to work with many B2B companies. I have gotten the opportunity to see the inner workings of some of the most successful companies in the U.S. More often than not I have found that these B2B juggernauts are home to brilliant engineers, product developers, software designers and genius number crunchers. What you don’t typically find, however, in a B2B environment is a stable of creative writers, video producers and savvy bloggers who are chomping at the bit to create digital content for their company. So how does a B2B company generate interesting content that will in turn attract a loyal following of online visitors? In a recent SEOLand post Brian Kaminski, managing director of SEO firm iProspect in San Francisco suggests leveraging a company’s PR department to take on the role. An informative read and a very smart idea. But what if your B2B company is small or midsized and doesn’t have the luxury of utilizing a PR department? You could hire on one or two individuals to create content for you. But that would mean taking on more employees to manage with the added cost of salary, health insurance, benefits and sick pay, etc. There’s a third cost-effective and efficient solution; hire a third-party company like Brandsplat dedicated to creating interesting branded content to take on that role. I don’t normally plug my companies’ services in blog entries, but I believe we offer B2B and B2C organizations an opportunity to reap the rewards of original branded content on the Internet without the cost associated with having a dedicated internal department. The thinking here is you wouldn’t take on the expense of an in-house advertising department when you can hire an outside agency to do the job for you in a more effective and cost-efficient way. Today it is common practice to hire third-party companies to do your advertising and media buying. So it’s a no brainer to do the same for content creation. At least that’s what I’m betting on.

May 27, 2009 By splatter Leave a Comment

I’m a Mac. I’m a PC. I’m a good ad.

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Normally I immediately block out banner ads when I peruse the interwebs, just like everyone else. But today, I was reading the front page of the digital edition of the New York Times and I came across one of those, “I”™m a Mac, I”™m a PC” ads. Firstly, the ad prompts you to opt-into the ad by clicking on the sound icon in the upper right hand corner, which I did mostly out of curiosity because I wanted to know what the Mac and PC guys were bantering about this time. I click and I hear the Mac guy pointing out the results to the latest Forrester researchÂ results that isÂ prominently displayed above their heads in a graph just under the NY Times masthead. The PC guy says,Â “Surprise, surprise, Apple ranks highest in customer experience among PC manufacturers. Well It’s just one survey. I’ll hear some more opinions before I decide.” Then, suddenly on the left hand side of the page we see an ad for Hair Growth Academy come to life.

We hear the man in the “Before” box say,Â “I love how Macs are so incredibly easy to use.” Then the coiffed man in the “After” box says, “And I love when I have a question, I can just talk to a Mac genius.”Â The ad finishes up with the PC guy saying, “OK, OK, before guy, that’s enough out of you. Looking good, after guy.”
Not only was this banner ad funny, it got me to pay attention to a graph, which I try to avoid as much as possible. What apple is doing here is great advertising that engages the jaded user while leaving them with a tidbit of information and a smile. This is what we attempt to do in our brandcasting service. We give the viewer something that will delight them, whether it be entertaining or just informative or both.

Enzo F. Cesario

Five Things You Might Have Missed!

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Brandcasting. Article marketing goes a long way. (Part 4 of 7).

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Brandcasting. Build a strong and SEO-friendly site. (Part 2 of 7)

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When slow growth gives way to slow death.

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How B2B companies can play the content development game.

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I’m a Mac. I’m a PC. I’m a good ad.

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