William and Kate are an online hit!

Fan or no fan, today’s royal nuptials were hard to miss.  Here’s a quick media recap:

• Mashable reported that in the last 30 days there were 911,000 Tweets, 217,000 Facebook posts/status updates and 145,000 blog posts on Prince William and Kate’s wedding.
  
• Webtrends says that a whopping 65% of tweets, blog posts and Facebook updates came from the U.S., while 20% came from the UK. Canada is in third place with a mere 2.6% of social media buzz. This matches stats from Nielsen, which also says that the U.S. is the #1 source of Royal Wedding chatter.

• MSNBC was pleasantly surprised that Twitter was able to handle the largest amount of activity the site has ever seen without a glitch or bug.

• Mashable said the Royal Wedding attracted the most concurrent viewers on Livestream ever - Topping over 300,000 concurrent viewers by 6 a.m. EST this morning.

• Livestream expected to serve about 2 million viewers, surpassing the 1.6 million views reported last June for the 2010 World Cup.

• Google’s home page is a Royal Wedding theme, with a Cinderella-like illustration featuring a horse drawn carriage. Users can click the picture to receive the latest news and photos of the Royal Wedding.
  
• According to Gen Connect, William and Kate are huge social media buffs. Thus, they’ve dedicated a YouTube Page as The Royal Channel where fans can watch videos, send video messages of good wishes and even sign their virtual wedding book

Not your dad’s word of mouth marketing

Just look at word of mouth now!

For eons, marketers like myself have preached that word of mouth is the most powerful way to drive interest in brands, motivate sales and create loyalty.  But creating programs with strong impact that don’t break the bank has always been a stumbling block.

Then along comes social media, whose ultimate appeal is that it isn’t just another medium on which to advertise or otherwise promote. It’s really about blurring the lines between personal-social interaction and what for marketers essentially becomes commercial interaction when a product, service or cause gets involved.

News feed posts to tens, hundreds or even thousands of friends -- versus the passive approach of generic marketing messages – is unmatched for attaining word of mouth’s credibility, confidence and loyalty.  So, while Facebook and other channels are usually described as “social” media tools for personal contact, for marketers they could more accurately be defined as “word of mouth” tools for commerce.

Facebook says it has data showing the cause and effect between sharing on Facebook and revenue generation on e-commerce sites.  When someone posts about a purchase, the value of purchases by their friends on that same e-commerce site increase over the norm. 

According to Facebook, 18 of the top 25 e-commerce sites are using Facebook features such as Facebook Connect or the “Like” button.  In one example, adding a “Like” button on an e-commerce site resulted in a doubling of revenue generated by Facebook referrals within two weeks. 

Think back just a few years to the “toe in the water” days when most of us far understated what we thought would be the impact of social media.  A web site with billions of members, many of who actively influence purchase decisions of their friends?  You gotta ask – what next?    

    

 Written By: Andrew Kraus

Facebook and Politics

The last Presidential election, Obama owned the Internet, but not so next year.  An article in this week’s New York Times shows how Republicans have caught up with Democrats in using technology and social networks.  Before you know it, we may be deciding our next President via Facebook and Twitter! Click here to read the story.

Getting the picture…

According to Reuters, some 327 million royal wedding-related pictures will be taken on digital cameras next week when Britain's Prince William ties the knot with girlfriend Kate Middleton.  The article goes on to say that half the photographers at Charles and Diana’s 1981 wedding missed the iconic balcony kiss because they were busy changing film.

What a difference 30 years makes.  These days, nothing escapes the digital eye, especially since most pictures are taken straight from our cell phones.  But what makes us actually take so many pics?  Is it simply because we can, or is it the desire to share our images?

Professional photos of William and Kate will be plastered across the tabloids, yet onlookers outside Buckingham Palace will still want to post their images of the event.  In fact, Reuters predicts that of the millions of photos taken at the royal wedding, some 65 million will be shared on social media sites.

That’s a huge number.  And that’s why a public relations firm like Epoch 5 works with clients to make sure they use social media to its fullest.  Customers, employees and other audiences are accustomed now to sites where they have a voice.  Whether it’s for a major financial institution or the hot new restaurant down the block, people want to participate and be part of the discussion.  After all, the desire to be heard and counted is an old one — almost as old as the need to believe in fairytale weddings.

Small Businesses – Big Opportunities

Mashable says that no matter how large or small your company, social media offers unique opportunities.  Social media programs, like those offered by our Long Island public relations firm, Epoch 5 Public Relations, are enhanced when clients follow these six great tips:

1. Your Customer Knows Best

Find out what sites your customers use the most, and get on those sites. Use the sites that are important to your market, as they will become valuable to you.

2. Social Media Isn’t Necessarily Free

Though there generally are no fees when creating and using social media profiles, these sites do require time and energy. Consider these part of the cost of being active and engaged.

3. Don’t Measure Success by Follower Counts

It’s not about the fan and follower count, it’s about who’s engaged and committed.  An enthusiastic community beats hordes of unengaged followers.

4. Social Media Doesn’t Equal Self-Promotion

Don’t only tweet or post about your company, your news, or your services. Instead, focus on your customers. Offer advice, tips and information that have value to them.

5. Learn From The Experts

Take note of various social media campaigns or interactions that appeal to you. Learn from the work of others, but tailor their experience to your and your customers’ needs.

6. Get Help But Keep Your Identity

Although you may engage a social media consultant, you should be familiar with social media tools and initiate your own authentic interactions with your communities.

March Madness: A Social Media Slam Dunk

Once just a national phenomenon, March Madness today is also an on-line sensation.  As with so many major live events today, enthusiasts, as well as casual followers, not only watch on television, but also tune in on their laptops, cell phones, tablets, and other devices.

Millions of eyeballs nationwide are bouncing back and forth from screen to screen throughout a game.  They watch the action on the court and react to great plays or bad calls with the stroke of a keyboard, while scanning the Internet-based social arena to see the reactions of other fans.  Facebook and Twitter add a dimension to the traditional TV broadcast that you can’t get anywhere else.

Sometimes a little-heard-of underdog – like Butler College – makes it to the Championship Match.  For the second season, the Butler Bulldogs gave America one of the most exhilarating joyrides in college basketball history.  PR and marketing firms, similar to our Long Island public relations agency, have come up with numerous creative ways to keep fans engaged in this Cinderella story through social media. 

For example, Butler’s adorable English bulldog mascot – Blue 2 – has become something of a celebrity and his social media status has grown.  He tweets and has almost 5,000 followers and has his own Facebook page.  And Butler fans who couldn’t travel to Houston had a media pass to follow their team's every move, with players tweeting and posting messages to their followers.

Optimize Your Content For Social Discovery

Mashable writes that since take-off of search, publishers have turned to search engine optimization (SEO) to grow their audience and expose their content.  SEO is keeping Google users well fed with meta data, keyword repetitions, internal linking and more.

At Epoch 5, our Long Island Public Relations Firm, we work with our clients to optimize their content by offering a few, simple rules…

1. Write Better Headlines: Headlines must be kept interesting and feed people’s curiosity. Good titling boosts clicks, especially from social networks like Twitter where users won’t see a blurb or image.

2. Make it visual:

Add an engaging thumbnail image to represent your story. Now that sites such as Facebook automatically pull in your thumbnail when people share your story, it’s more important than ever to use engaging images.

3. Hold On to the Readers You Have:
Use your page’s real estate wisely. We tend to focus on drawing new audiences into our content, but it’s equally important to think about how to keep their attention once arrive to our site.

4. Create the Best Possible Content in the First Place:
Write original pieces. Now that content discovery is moving more and more into the hands of real people who are sharing, recommending and reading your content, there’s a limit to how much you can use repurposed or aggregate content.

Visit www.epoch5.com for more information

Tweets are in like a lamb…out like a cobra!

March came in like a lion, but did not go out like a lamb…more like a cobra, in fact!  The fixation on the Bronx Zoo’s missing cobra had us all “aTwitter.”  For real…though the Twitter feed @BronxZoosCobra was certainly fake – right?  According to Reuters, over 200,000 followers, including @MikeBloomberg and @SesameStreet, were hooked on the Tweets about the cobra’s exploits in New York’s man-made jungle.

The team at our Long Island public relations firm, Epoch 5, may not be hunting cobras but we are tracking Twitter feeds, looking for exceptional examples to share with clients.  These days, social media plans should consider the merits of micro-blogging, whether for brand building, urgent communications in crisis management or SEO.  And, in the case of @BronxZoosCobra, Twitter became a great marketing tool, drawing attention to one of New York City’s landmarks.

So, there’s some regret that the cobra was found March 31^st and that the funny, entertaining series of tweets will end.  Anyone know anything about March’s runaway lamb?