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Great Video Brand Examples on Instagram

21 Sep

Instagram now has 500 million active users, and it is rapid pulling away from Twitter (whose user base has been rather stagnant). Instagram’s popularity has not gone unnoticed by brand marketers who have been posting pictures and videos in great numbers.

Recently, HubSpot wrote about some of the best video examples of brands using Instagram. According to  Lindsay Kolowich:

“Remember when Instagram first started allowing users to post videos back in 2013? The first Instagram videos had to be recorded on your phone and could only be up to 15 seconds long. Those were the days that people compared Instagram video to its Twitter-owned counterpart, Vine. Instagram’s come a long way since then, and it’s blown Vine out of the water. Like most of the other popular social networks, the folks at Instagram have made changes to its platform that make it easier for people to post and share videos.”

“In late March 2016, Instagram announced it would start rolling out the ability for Instagram users to upload 60-second videos. For iOS users, it added that users would soon be able to make videos out of multiple clips from their camera rolls. Thanks to these changes, marketers can use the Instagram app to relate with their fans and customers, to communicate their business’ personalities and brand stories, and to express artistic creativity.”

 
Here are a few of the 17 brands cited by HubSpot. Click on their names to access their Instagram pages. The posts with video have a video camera in the upper right corner:

 

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How Effective Are Social Media?

9 Sep

With virtually every large company — and many mid-sized and small firms — now involved with social media in some question, one of the big challenges that remains is: How can we measure the effectiveness of social media? Yes, we can rather easily track the number of likes we get and generate reports on comments at social media sites. But how can we measure return on investment (ROI)?

To help address the effectiveness of social media, Duke’s Fuqua School of Business recently conducted a study of chief marketing officers (CMOs) at a number of companies.

As reported by eMarketer:

“Social media ad spending continues to grow in the U.S., with eMarketer forecasting the format will make up more than 20% of digital ad spending by 2017. Yet even as marketers’ social media budgets increase, many are still struggling to make sense of its overall impact on their business.”
 
“Based on an August survey of U.S.-based CMOs by Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, executives from across the business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) sectors are still figuring out how to gauge the true effect of social media on their business. The problem is more pronounced for those in the B2B sector, where nearly half of respondents haven’t yet been able to show the impact of social media. Many in the B2C sector have had better luck showing the qualitative impact of social, although 60% or more of CMOs still they did not know the channel’s quantitative impact.
 
Take a look at the two charts on the Duke study from eMarketer. See what CMOs say their companies are doing to assess social media effectiveness.
 

 


 

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THREE Infographics to Help Improve Customer Satisfaction

1 Sep

As we know well, the minimum requirement for consumer loyalty is customer satisfaction, a concept that needs to be thoroughly understood and sought by companies.

Recently, Salesforce developed the three infographics shown below on customer satisfaction and how to improve it.  As reported by Ritika Puri:

“Customer satisfaction is one of the toughest, most abstract concepts to capture and measure. Satisfaction is often in the eye of the beholder, and if you’re using a tool like a survey, you’re relying on self-reported data that presents only one side of the story. In addition, “success” is multi-faceted: A customer may be happy overall, but there may be some hidden deal-breakers that are hurting your retention metrics. So how do you tackle this challenge and improve your customer satisfaction scores?  Measure success from a few different dimensions. In addition to understanding why your customers are happy, you should focus on specific elements that contribute to overall success.”

 


 

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How Scenario Planning Influences Strategic Decisions

31 Aug

Scenario planning involves planning for the future by understanding that different marketplace outcomes may occur in response to any strategy and that each possible marketplace outcome must be planned for to avoid the worst case scenario.

Here’s a simple example: Suppose that a major soda company introduces a new non-carbonated cola beverage into the marketplace. These are just a few scenarios that are possible:

  • The sales of the new beverage meet expectations and do not cannibalize the sales of other company products. Overall company revenues and profit rise.
  • The sales of the new beverage meet expectations, but slightly cannibalize the sales of other company products. Overall company revenues and profits rise slightly.
  • The sales of the new beverage meet expectations, but greatly cannibalize the sales of other company products. Overall company revenues stay the same, and profits fall somewhat due to the investment in the new item.
  • The sales of the new beverage do not meet expectations and do not cannibalize the sales of other company products. Overall company revenues rise very little, and profits fall a lot due to the investment in the new item.

The premise of scenario planning is to anticipate the possibility of each of these outcomes occurring and have in place a pre-planned framework (contingency plan) to deal with each scenario.

Recently, Shardul Phadnis, Chris Caplice, and Yossi Sheffi wrote an article for the MIT Soan Management Review titled “How Scenario Planning Influences Strategic Decisions.” The authors reached three major conclusions:

  1. “The use of multiple scenarios is not necessarily an antidote for overconfidence. One should not assume that simply using multiple scenarios to evaluate a long-range decision will help alleviate the negative effects of decision makers’ overconfidence in their own judgment.”
  2. “Scenarios influence judgment — and their content matters. More than half the judgments in our studies changed after single-scenario evaluations. Scenario users became more favorable of investing in an element — either by increasing confidence in their original recommendation to invest, decreasing confidence in their original recommendation to not invest, or changing their recommendation to favor the investment — when they found the element useful in a scenario.”
  3. “The use of multiple scenarios can nudge executives towards more flexible strategies. Executives often choose strategies optimized for a particular environment. While such strategies may perform well in the environment envisioned at the time of their implementation, they may not be easily adaptable to new opportunities or in response to unexpected threats.  Under such circumstances, evaluating strategic decisions using multiple scenarios can help executives appreciate the importance of choosing more flexible assets or approaches — even if doing so is not the most optimal choice for present-day conditions.”

Click the image to access the article.

 

 

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How to Be More Confident and Motivated

24 Aug

Click the image below to download the FREE book Personal Confidence & Motivation from MTD Training. [Note: A simple login is required. Select working as your option.]

“Do you have the self-belief and confidence to make a difference? Do you ‘just know’ that you’ll succeed no matter what? Do you know what motivates and gets you going? And do you know how to tap into the motivations of other people? In this book, you’ll find the answers to all of these questions and much more besides! You’ll understand how to build your own confidence levels and how to generate confidence in an instant. You’ll then move onto the topic of motivation and you’ll be able to really understand this area of personal development.”

 

 

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Our Six-Part Series on Pricing Tips

19 Jul

Recently, we published a six-part series on pricing practices and tips.

Here, in one place (🙂 ), are links to each part of the series:

 

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An In-Depth Infographic on Blogging

6 Jul

Thinking of starting or improving your own blog? Do you want your blog to go from good to great?

The Wise Startup Blog has developed a terrific infographic with more than one hundred ideas on developing and posting a blog. Take a look.

 


 

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