Social Media Has Changed How I Watch TV

by Frederika Angus

In the United States, people are popping their popcorn and settling down with their TVs on and their laptop or smartphone near by. It’s about time for another Presidential Debate. Now I’m not big on politics, but I do like to be informed. Besides when over 75% of my Facebook News Feed and nearly ALL of my Twitter feed is filled with status updates on the debates, I can’t help but want to tune in.

My husband and I listen to the candidates with our eyes firmly on our smart phones, looking for the funniest tweet, or most interesting picture that is going viral during the broadcast. I’m one to follow the Twitter or Instagram hashtags to find the best content, while he searches for certain well-known entertainers to give him the best laugh. For nearly 2 hours, we pass our phones back and forth amused and entertained, not from the actual content of the debate, but from social media!

Social media has completely changed how I watch TV!

I’m not a huge TV watcher by nature. I’d much prefer to read or listen to music. Unless it’s football season and my favorite team the San Francisco 49ers are playing. Then I’m glued to the tube. But I’ve digressed. When I do tune in to a show, it’s almost unnatural to do so without my phone in hand. It’s like having a huge viewing party with all of my closest social media fans!

From a marketing perspective, I’ve seen both the campaigns do some amazing marketing during the debate, including buying hashtags on Twitter and investing in ads on Facebook to target their ideal market.

Here are a couple articles to see how they’ve been using social media to market for a political position:

Obama Beats Romney in Internet Savvy & Social Media

http://www.forbes.com/sites/karstenstrauss/2012/10/09/obama-beats-romney-in-internet-savvy-social-media/

Romney Facebook App Asks You to Message Friends for His Campaign

http://mashable.com/2012/10/22/romney-facebook-app/

The Presidential Campaign on Social Media

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/10/08/technology/campaign-social-media.html

Does this give you any ideas on how you can utilize the different social media platforms to market to your ideal customers?

Come over to my Facebook Page and tell me about them!

Talk to you soon!

Using Facebook Images For Larger Engagement

by Frederika Angus

For those smart businesses that are already ahead of the curve and are using Facebook timeline pages to do your marketing and business activities, each week you’ll receive an email from Facebook. It will give some brief details on how many new likes your page has received and how many people are talking about your page.

When using Facebook for marketing your business, the goal is to obtain Like, Shares and Comments. These three things are the key components that drive the “talking about this” number that are shown on all business pages.

One of the most effective ways I have been able to get results in increasing engagement for my clients, besides having them personally show up and talk to their fans several times a day, is using photos, and graphic images. The social culture loves to be able to like an image, or share something that resonates with quickly. A well designed image draws people to your content easily in their sometimes overcrowded timeline. Remember, there is a reason why Facebook switched to the timeline format for profiles and pages with the great option to brand using the cover image. They also bought Instagram, the fastest growing photo-sharing social media platform. Photos and even text images give you an advantage.

Check out a few articles on the topic:

Photos, Engagement are Key for Facebook Marketing Success

This summer at a Facebook Marketing Conference, the panel all agreed that photos and personal engagement with fans usually leads to success.

For Brand Engagement, Visuals Rule

In a study of the top 10 brands on Facebook, users liked photos twice as often as text updates.

How One Startup Beat Walmart in Facebook Engagement

This is a great story from Forbes on a startup small business is using Facebook and getting amazing engagement using images!

Those same results are possible for you.

So tell me, how will your brand start using images to engage your faithful fans?

Talk to you soon!