Why Brands Need to Shut Their Mouths and Open Their Ears

Traditionally, branding has been a one-way communication stream. Successful brands from Coca-Cola to Coco Chanel have spent huge sums of money creating ad campaigns of polar bears or models in exotic locales. social media marketing agency The aim of these campaigns was to dictate to audiences what was cool. And not so long ago (think Mad Men era) there were far fewer channels of communication. Everyone sat around reading one of a few newspapers or watching a handful of television stations. As a result, these expensive campaigns placed in one of these channels had guaranteed exposure. Today that kind of guarantee doesn't exist.The rise of the internet, and more importantly the ubiquity of the smartphone, has shattered this traditional system. The advertising playbook has expanded from television, radio and print to also include banner ads, mobile ads, Facebook and streaming content, just to name just a few. If it were just an expansion in the menu of options, traditional brand builders would be fine, as it would be just a matter of tailoring the same message to all these different formats. But that isn't the case.The impact of the smartphone has turned the consumer of brand building into their own brands: through every Instagram image she captures, message she sends through Twitter or post she pins on Pinterest, each individual creates a story, a brand about themselves to share with the outside world. What does this have to do with traditional brands? Everything.Another key clause to include in any endorsement agreement pertains to termination and suspension. social media marketing jobs Under what circumstances can you terminate or suspend your endorsement agreement with a particular celebrity? Most endorsement agreements include a ‘morals clause,’ which will allow you to terminate or suspend the agreement if the celebrity engages in conduct that is “criminal” or “morally reprehensible.” However, be sure to define criminal and morally reprehensible behavior. What you find morally reprehensible Lindsay Lohan may not.

Ask and you shall receive

We noticed that a customer posted a photo on Instagram of their latest Zady package with their dog, and requested that Zady carry sustainable products for their pets. We didn’t let this comment go unheard.what is social media marketing But we wanted to test the waters, so we re-grammed the picture on our Instagram feed and posted it to Twitter, asking our audience what other products they were interested in seeing us carry.Your company can do the same simply by asking, preferably with some visuals, what people want to see either on your site or with your product. Avoid vague terminology and aim to be as specific as possible. Clauses that contain amorphous wording are oftentimes unenforceable in a court of law. So when crafting your ‘morals clause,’ think about what values your company represents and what behaviors and actions are in direct opposition to those values. The last thing you want is for your bourgeoning company to be associated with a salacious scandal. Finally, always make sure your endorsement tweets are in compliance with federal rules and regulations. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), whose mission is to prevent business practices that are anticompetitive, deceptive or unfair to consumers, regulates the phrasing of endorsements on social media platforms. If a celebrity is compensated to advertise or promote a product or service, the FTC requires that the endorser disclose the nature of the endorsement.Disclosure must be clear and conspicuous and should be placed as close as possible to the claim they qualify. To ensure compliance, the FTC recommends endorsers use such hashtags as ad or sponsored in conjunction with endorsed tweets. social media marketing companies Stress the importance of these rules to your celebrity endorser.Facebook defines organic reach as “the number of unique people who saw your post in News Feed or on your page, including people who saw it from a story shared by a friend when they liked, commented on or shared your post, answered a question or responded to an event.”

Prior and future agreements

There are several warranties and assurances you will want your celebrity endorser to make in an endorsement agreement. Firstly, you will want your celebrity endorser to warrant that his or her arrangements with you do not legally violate any previous agreements with other third parties or companies. social media marketing plan Secondly, you will want your celebrity endorser to warrant that he or she will not enter into any subsequent agreements with other companies that are in direct competition with yours, at least for a certain period.The re-gram garnered an overwhelming response that folks wanted sustainable dog products.Everyone wants to have his opinion heard, and you will get responses to the question, but just make sure that each person feels heard. You can do this simply by liking their comments or reposting their comments on your company’s social accounts. We followed up to this query by searching for a stylish, long-lasting, locally and sustainably produced dog product. By the time we had the product up on our site and sent an email out alerting our customers of its arrival, our audience was so engaged that our first run of the pieces sold out within days.Of course, the key to the two-way conversation is the response. You have to make your company flexible to following what your community tells you.We see examples like this as not just good for sales in the short run, but more importantly they help build a sustained, long-term relationship with the customer. This helps convert customers into crusaders for your brand: All of that without spending a penny.In other words, organic is basically free marketing. social media marketing strategy But it looks like organic is dying a slow death.At a time when Facebook is rolling out a new look and controls for its Facebook pages, it is also making it harder for businesses to get their content seen for free. In February, organic reach hovered around 6 percent, about half of what it was in October of 2013, according to recent analysis by Ogilvy & Mather.