Twitter adds photo tagging. Social Media Snippets by Jonathan Pollinger

Twitter to launch photo tagging and multiple photo upload - In its ongoing efforts to become more user friendly and seemingly more like Facebook, Twitter is launching a couple of new photo features. The former is available on Android (at least for me) and according to Twitter’s blog annoucement and the app notes, both should be available on iPhone and iPad although they’re not yet available for me. These features provide the opportunity to create further engagement by publishing photos that are relevant to your brand. You can choose whether you want to be tagged or not and by whom under Settings on twitter.com (see below).

Pinterest Ads here next month – This month will see the launch of Pinterest Ads or to be more accurate ‘Promoted Pins’. Taking a similar approach to Twitter, images will appear in the feed marked with ‘Promoted Pin’ on the bottom left. However, unlike Twitter there is no self-service platform with the product only available for marketing agencies, at least for now. Apart from the Promoted Pin label, it will be impossible to distinguish from regular pins so shouldn’t jar too much with users. Video ads will follow in June.

Instagram passes 200m users – Last week the photo and video sharing social network Instagram, reached a milestone yesterday when it passed the 200 million active users mark. Now owned by Facebook, it’s growing fast with 50 million of Instagram’s users signed up in the last six months, which means its total members grew by a massive 100% in the last year.

Twitter also testing “Share” and “Fave People” – In addition, Twitter is experimenting with replacing the “Retweet” with a new “Share” button and some Android users have noticed an alternative to Twitter lists in the form of a ‘Fave People’ button that is displayed between “Home” and “Discover” on the top menu.

LinkedIn to scrap Products and Services tab –  LinkedIn Company Pages are to lose the Products and Services tab. If you’ve spent time adding details of your Products and Service you need to take action now, particularly if you’ve obtained recommendations. With effect from 14 April 2014 all Products and Services information and recommendations will disappear so if you want to keep it you need to copy and save it elsewhere. LinkedIn advise people to set up Showcase Pages which they introduced in November. The idea is to have a Showcase Page for each of your product or service. This is fine for larger companies who have a range of products or services and the resources to maintain them but not so much for smaller businesses. Read more about this on LinkedIn’s Help. Please book some time with me if you need advice on this.

Linkedin to launch content score and trending topics - LinkedIn have introduced two new features to help make your use of LinkedIn a bit smarter; Content Marketing Score and Trending Content.  The former measures member engagement with your Sponsored Updates, Company Pages, LinkedIn Groups, employee updates, and Influencer posts (if applicable) and ranks you against your competitors on those same criteria. Mimicking Trending on Facebook and Twitter, Trending Content will display the most popular articles on the professionals network. These features will help you understand more about your and others content and help you measure your progress.

Source: http://intranetfuture.com/twitter-adds-photo-tagging-latest-in-social-media/

The Anatomy of a Connected Consumer by Rachel Serpa

Twenty years ago, the best way to reach consumers was to come up with a memorable TV commercial, design an eye-catching editorial and maybe, if you were feeling tech savvy, run a banner ad or two. Needless to say, today’s consumer landscape has changed drastically, and continues to evolve at a dizzying pace.

The Internet of Things will account for 9 billion devices by 2018 (Business Insider), mobile will account for 21% of all online purchases by 2015 (Google), and social network users will surpass 2 billion by 2016 (eMarketer). Ironically, despite the explosion of technology, channels and devices, today’s continuously connected consumers are harder to reach than ever before.

The below infographic breaks down the anatomy of the connected consumer to help your brand more effectively reach, engage and convert customers across today’s mobile and socially connected landscape.

For more information on how to successfully reach and convert connected consumers, download our Ultimate Guide to 2014 Marketing Success.

Source: http://blog.gigya.com/infographic-the-anatomy-of-a-connected-consumer/

3 Challenges Facing Marketers in 2014 By Emma Tzeng

It’s nearly unthinkable to consider how far marketing has traversed in the past year alone. While marketers continued to hone their social strategies and experiment with big data and omni-channel tactics in 2013, this coming year will pose its own hurdles, as businesses concentrate their efforts on unifying user experiences, achieving provable social ROI, and knowing their customers in even deeper, more actionable ways.

This article dissects three major challenges marketers will come head to head with this year, along with action plans for tackling and overcoming these obstacles.

Challenge #1: Unifying Cross-Channel Experiences with First Party Data

In 2013, eMarketer reported that 45% of consumers prefer shopping experiences that combine online, mobile, and in-store interactions. As customers interact more with brands across multiple devices, however, marketers need to figure out how to obtain a consistent view of consumer identity over a variety of mediums.

To complicate the matter, traditional retargeting techniques that utilize third party cookie data to construct inferred consumer personas don’t translate to mobile. As the average time spent on mobile devices exceeds desktop usage rates and consumers become increasingly social both online and offline, marketers are more pressed than ever to rely on first party data to inform their marketing strategies and craft unique customer experiences.

(Source: eMarketer)

Solution: Social Login for Access to First Party Data

The best way to acquire firsthand insights on your users is to start at the source — their social networks. Social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ collect millions of actionable data points on their users such as their locations, emails, genders, interests, likes, social graphs, and more. Businesses can gain direct access to these insights by leveraging social login on their digital properties, which captures social profile information in a permission-based manner.

For example, Dutch airline KLM incorporates social login into its digital experience, offering four different social provider options and displaying a prominent call to action for a streamlined user experience that encourages more consumers to log in socially. As these users choose social login, KLM gets access to valuable social profile information that it can leverage to personalize user experiences across channels.

In KLM’s instance, the airline uses social login to power its Meet & Seat program, which lets flyers see who else is on board their flight and select seats based on other flyers’ seat assignments.

By integrating social into its in-flight experiences, KLM gathers valuable data on its customers while facilitating serendipitous, memorable opportunities for their flyers to connect with one another offline.

Challenge #2: Proving the ROI of Social

As we discussed earlier, social login is the gateway to firsthand consumer insights. These insights, in turn, can be analyzed and measured to determine just how much direct value social delivers to your marketing initiatives.

Solution: Measurable Insights Offer a Deeper Dive into ROI

We’ve outlined three factors to measure to effectively determine the ROI of your social marketing efforts:

• Increase in registrations – How much have site registration numbers increased since implementing social login?
• Value of a registered user – To determine the value of a registered user, you’ll want to examine the estimated return for new user registrations. Take the following example: An ecommerce site registers 10,000 users a month. Of these registrations, 500 users go on to make purchases on the site over the span of a year. If each purchaser’s average shopping cart conversion is $75, then the value per registered user is $3.75. What is the value per registered user for your business?
• Decrease in forgotten password help desk issues – When users log in socially, they save themselves from having to remember another username and password combination; your business, in turn, avoids the hassle of dealing with lost password recovery issues. What is the decrease in support costs since implementing social login?

Check out our white paper, Path to ROI: Boosting Demand Gen and Improving Conversions with Social Login, for a deeper dive into how capturing social identities directly affects ROI.

Challenge #3: Knowing Your Customers in Even Deeper, More Actionable Ways

As users’ Internet habits evolve, we’re seeing a greater shift in online sharing: consumers are posting personal photographs, life events, and more across their social networks. This move towards a more connected, open social web reflects how consumers and businesses should interact in a landscape that encourages the sharing of users’ information in a safe, valuable way.

Solution: Schemaless, Social-Optimized Database for Seamless Data Storage

To facilitate this process, you should invest in a database that is not only secure but also fully equipped to handle the varied, dynamic nature of social data. This database structure is known as a schemaless database, and it enables sites and apps to store all types of unstructured (social and behavioral) data without any constraints.

After finding a secure data management system to store and manage your users’ data, you’ll want to invest in a marketer-friendly, web-based dashboard that enables marketers to access user data, define their audience segments, and apply these findings directly to their marketing strategies. This grants you full control over your marketing efforts, allowing you to work with the data to glean new insights on your user base and turn these insights into measurable actions.

In 2014, Personalization Triumphs

As consumers continue gravitating towards personal online experiences, it’s important for businesses wanting to retain a loyal customer base to remain a step ahead of their users. This means swapping mass marketing techniques for tailored messages that speak to users on an individual level. Businesses that successfully carry this out can expect to see real ROI on their marketing campaigns.

Source: http://blog.gigya.com/3-challenges-facing-marketers-in-2014/