By Meghan Sharkey, Director of Marketing 

The ease and speed of sending a message across social sites proves to be both the beauty and the beast of using the medium. In many ways it is a positive feature, people can literally reach their followers almost immediately with just a simple click of the button. However if managed poorly, a careless typo can cause irreparable damage to a brand or individual’s reputation. In the past year we have seen countless public social media scandals that have been detrimental to the person’s or company’s image including Anthony Weiner, Blake Lively, and Chrysler to name only a few. As soon as content is published it becomes public and even if one chooses to delete the post/tweet/etc, it can always be found again. Let’s review a few best practices to both prevent a social media scandal from happening and some tips on how to properly manage if one does occur.

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By Meghan Sharkey, Director of Marketing 

Marketers are recognizing the power of utilizing social media in their advertising strategy and as this method proves to be more and more successful we begin to see new marketing techniques emerge that encompass both online and offline media. There are plenty of examples of brands that have used events and/or games with prizes to entice participation as means to drive fans to their Facebook page or increase their number of followers on Twitter. However, the big question that remains is are these brands thinking about their social strategy correctly? Simply increasing the number of fans that like your page is only beneficial if you are attracting the right audiences and have a plan to facilitate engagement.

Let’s take a look at a recent campaign that incorporated a social component into both their online and offline media efforts, The Bud Light You Call It Playoffs. This campaign began on January 7^th and ended on January 22^nd of this year. It was themed around the playoff games for the Super Bowl XLVI and essentially allowed participants to guess the “Winning Plays” of each playoff game for a chance to win one of the many prizes being offered. Bud Light used both their TV and Print ads to direct people to an online URL with instructions to register. The interesting thing about this campaign, is the landing page of the website forced users to login through their Facebook account in order to participate. Furthermore, once you login you are then asked to “Like” Bud Light’s page before you are able to proceed any further. Bud Light utilized its offline media presence to directly drive people to a social network.

This Bud Light You Call It Playoffs campaign is a great example of how brands are experimenting with new marketing techniques that incorporate a social element. As marketers, we are absolutely still in this trial-and-error stage of determining what advertising strategies work best on social networks. However, one thing we can be confident in is how crucial it is to target the audience that is most likely to engage with your brand. Driving fans to your Facebook page is pointless if there is no follow up plan to continuously engage these people by interacting with them regularly. Acquiring fair-weathered fans by bribes or sweepstakes is useless as they are more likely to “Unlike” your page or hide the content following the completion of the game/challenge/event that originally enticed them. Marketers should consider the value of leveraging their current fan base to build an authentic community who will continue to engage with the brand long after the campaign is over.   

By Meghan Sharkey, Director of Marketing                 

The Super Bowl used to just be about football, but nowadays, the event has evolved into a high-stakes advertising game. Last year, at $3 million or so on a 30-second ad, the pressure was on to produce a campaign that would have a lasting effect long after the 30 seconds were over. Over the past few years, we are beginning to see a new trend emerge in Super Bowl commercials; a large majority of these advertisements include a strong social media component. According to Lightspeed Research, last year it was estimated that:

•  Nearly two-thirds of 18-34 year-olds planning to watch the Super Bowl have smartphones and intended to use them while watching the game
•  Additionally, almost a third (32%) of these viewers will be posting comments about the game on a social network

This year it can be expected that more people than ever will be watching the game with one eye glued to some social network throughout it all. Let’s review some of the social media highlights from the 2011 Super Bowl game.

•  Christina Aguilera opening the game with the National Anthem and forgetting a few words in the beginning verses became a fast trending topic on Twitter.
• According to BrandBowl2011, the top commercial was Chrysler with a total of 32,514 tweets. However, the Doritos commercial was the most talked about with an overwhelming 34,063 tweets and the most loved ad was Volkswagon’s “The Force” commercial with a sentiment ranking of +32.1%.
• Mercedes-Benz “The World’s First Twitter-Fueled Race” was a campaign first promoted on Mercedes Facebook page and challenged fans to try and accrue the most Twitter followers and Facebook “likes” during a race to Dallas. The team with the most social media tallies won a Mercedes Benz 2012 C-Class Coupe.
•  Foursquare launching its first ever-global venue allowing fans to check-in to The Super Bowl. This campaign seemed like a great idea until Foursquare experienced several server errors preventing people from checking-in until the second half of the game. In the end, there was a total of 187,281 Super Bowl check-ins.

Now you might be wondering what is the best social media approach to advertising for this year’s Super Bowl? Mashable outlines five of their top social media game plans for the most effective reach.

1. Establish a Real-Time Narrative: Creating user generated content (UGC) has proven to be a great success for brands like Frito-Lay and Mercedes. These brands start their campaigns in September and encourage users to interact by creating and voting on different ads for the big game.
2. Turn It Into a Game:  In the months leading up to the game, brands should entice fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter to guess the plot for different ad spots or hype secret messages within them. Brands can then reward these users for their engagement.
3. Release a Tie-In App: Develop an app based on the ad will help to give your Super Bowl campaign life in social media. This method is not widely used but if done correctly it has the potential to reap major benefits.
4. Advertise the Ad: Similar to a teaser for a movie, brands should consider hyping their Super Bowl ad by tweeting about it beforehand and getting people excited to see it.
5.  Just Throw It on YouTube: This tactic is very new and somewhat untested. Last year, Volkswagon’s “The Force” commercial was posted on YouTube days before the game and within the first 48 hours had 1.5 million viewers and was a trending topic on Twitter.

The 2012 game will be the most social Super Bowl to date and marketers would be smart to keep that in mind when creating their campaigns for the big day. Looking forward to watching a great game!