Typography titles for Pinterest Success

The blogger from Half Price Books did something very clever on their blog recently so they deserve all the click through and traffic to their site. I came across this pin on Pinterest the other day, and was linked to a blog page titled: '40 books  you won't be able to put down' .

The  post was made of a collage of  famous book covers and was exceptionally inviting for me to pin away. Because Pinterest is all about sharing visual content, this blog post creates potential for Half Price Books to share 40 pins of popular books- resulting to link referrals as people forage to find a good read.


Typography speaks louder than words
Lesson learnt here is that creating blog titles with good typography can be a smart way to drive traffic to  your website. Have you noticed how many motivational typography quotes have been circulating Pinterest? I sure am a sucker for them. Words are made more meaningful by creative typography, so blog titles and even your twitter thoughts can be played around with in Adobe Illustrator.

Have you heard of the term, “visual language”? The article, When Typography Speaks Louder than Words, explains how visual language is achieved when a designer can create typography that transcend a  voice onto plain text. Certain design elements can influence how a person reads and interprets the text- maybe it can motivate them to engage in your message? Feel inspired by your brand and most importantly spread the word for you.

Social media - politeness costs nothing and gains everything.

 

Badge from beanforest @Esty

The saying: "politeness cost nothing and gains everything" just nails it, not just in real life but in the world of social media. Being polite has high return on investment and it is a skill that should be practiced in everyday life as well as when you are online. As we become more active online it is highly relevant to not forget about the value of being polite on a public forum.

While on Facebook or twitter you should not underestimate the importance of maintaining a respectable online identity. A thank you mention or a quick reply goes a long way - lets remember that today media never stands alone and a huge aspect of it is "social". People who are great at social media know how to translate real social etiquette while they are online. They are polite and they make it a priority to cater to their followers and offer them meaningful content. Being polite online can encourage viewers to appreciate you for your ideas and support them by "following" you, which like real life social influence is great.

Here is some proof for return-in- politeness investment: In the world of social media politeness proves to be effective when communicating on twitter. Dan Zarrella from Hubspot conducted an analysis of how certain words, phrases or characters increased click-through rates.

And it is not surprising that when the word 'please' was tweeted viewers were likely to click on the link. The click though rate is 3.57% with the word please and only 2.1% without it- a significant gain for simply saying 'please'.
 
Acknowledging the original tweet by using the word 'via' also resulted to an increased CTR. This method of retweeting encourages users to click links, mainly because of your considerations to reference another user and adding credibility to the link.

So remember the way you interact online should mimic real life socialising, be polite and sensitive to other peoples thoughts and ideas.

Dan has other great insights into what motivates user in social media interactions- be sure to check out his work @ danzarrella.com

Airtime - All you need is a Facebook account and a webcam.

 

Airtime blog Launch

Last week on the 5th of June, Airtime introduced itself as the first live video network service to create shared experiences online- all you need is a Facebook account and a webcam. From the Airtime Blog, its creators Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning were enthusiastic to deliver something fresh and new to “re-humanize” the internet. Airtime is said to not only be a product but a network service.

The service allows you to share live experiences through content, and expand beyond your social graph to discover new people through similar interests in an environment that is collaborative, fun and safe.

My first thought was how is it different to Skype? Well that was cleared up very quickly - Airtime shoves Skype aside and leads as the new and completely confident new kid. It is positioned as a social network that will empower users with fun and  personal shared experiences. Unlike Skype Airtime facilitates a interactive social environment for two people to watch content based on shared interests


The value in meaningful interactions
From a marketing perspective, Airtime is creating a niche for meaningful online interactions that mimics real life. Parker and Fanning launch blog post was short but had a succinct value proposition. Airtime is all about 'sharing the experience' in a way that is intuitive and somewhat more real. It will be exciting to see if this value proposition can stand apart from existing video chat services such as Skype and Google hangouts.

However the company does have some strategies to differentiate themselves from the pack. With its intelligent profile analysis techniques Airtime analyzes its users’ Facebook profiles, stores their ‘likes’, to find common interests between two people and match them into a video chat. This matching system  allows users to talk about their interests and experience meaningful interactions. To ensure quality of the conversation there is a points and badges program, where Airtime  awards users a points know as  'applause' for the quality of their videos. When users are matched with someone that they do not know, both can gain points based on the quality of the conversation.

Airtime's positioning strategy will be crucial in how the company succeeds in the niche market. Airtime can be the next big thing if it can occupy a clear, distinctive value perception in the mind of its users. With a solid effort for security measures and continual focus to foster quality online relationships, Airtime does offer an appealing alternative to video communication. 

Engaging the Masses- Simple but effective Social Media campaigns that we should learn from

As a final year uni student  there should be a time when you come to really appreciate what you're studying- no more of the; 'get the degree over and done with' attitude. It's a time to be practical with what you see in the world and develop a critical point of view- that is applying the theory.

I'm so excited to finally be able to do this and interpret the text book stuff with real life context.  Recently I have been observant of companies and their Integrated Marketing Communication strategies. Everything just makes so much more sense! Just stop and think about how the advertisement caught your eye or how you got so engaged in a brands social media efforts. How are they integrating that message across their Facebook page, twitter and website?

An effective IMC strategy is getting a creative message across in a consistent and compelling way. The message is strategically exposed through different communication channels to achieve the 3 following goals:

 Create audience engagement.
 I say engagement because its one step further from just getting an audiences attention. As social marketers we are pass that - getting attention from an IMC message is something that a good marketer can achieve, but creating engagement is what a great marketer can create.Creating such engagement in itself is creating a social offering. The next step after the establishing the product offering and generating attention through exposure, marketers now need to come up with a social offering that generates attention around the product. Social media campaigns begs the question; What is worth sharing?

An awesome example of creative IMC that created engagement through twitter is the

 Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Jinx campaign.

This campaign was hugely successful and allowed Kraft to not only generation word-of -mouth buzz but also a in a sense interactive engagement with their (v.simple) product - mac and cheese. The campaign worked on the principles of the game Jinx.


Streamlined across social media channels
When two people tweeted 'mac & cheese', Kraft would send a link to each of them - first person to reply back gets a free T-shirt and hey hey some mac and cheese - to eat obviously but maybe to share with friends and talk about it on Facebook? a very likely scenario to very clever campaign. Facebook was the partner in crime for this campaign, it drove the message a step further and facilitated an interaction system for both the winners and losers of the mac jinx game.

Create a brand image that is bigger than it really is
The underlying success for this campaign was that the marketers were able to create a larger than life appeal for Kraft's mac and cheese. It is only mac and cheese- but then you can argue after all this buzz that NO! IT  it is not JUST mac and cheese its more than that and I LOVE it!

To top off a splendid IMC strategy, that message is on giant mac and cheese (literally bigger than life) reaching the masses and creating more conviction to buy it because: "you know you love it"