3 Ways Brands are Using Vine for Father’s Day

Brands are becoming increasingly more active on the new social media app Vine and for good reason. Unruly Media, a video technology company, recently found that branded vines are shared 4x as often as other branded Internet videos. Branded vines were also 4% of the top 100 shared vines. This is almost unheard of as most viral videos are not connected to brands. The platform allows users to create six-second looping videos. The apps brevity, like Twitter,  encourages brands to get creative while appealing to consumers rapidly shrinking attention span.

With Father's Day around the corner, many brands are using Vine as a marketing tool. Here are three ways we've seen brands use Vine effectively:

1. Promote Products

Vines 6-second format changes the way advertisers approach video marketing. With limited time, companies have to spotlight their products in an interesting way and get their message across fast. Moonpig, a greeting card company that allows users to create unique cards online, created a vine to promote their Father's Day cups:

— Moonpig (@MoonpigUK) June 11, 2013

Cold Stone Creamery took product promotion a step further and explicitly suggested their icecream over traditional choices:

2. Give Insight into Products

Instead of presenting a finished product, Vine allows brands to show the process of creation. Cloak and Dapper, a gentleman's clothing store, used this method to spotlight individual products in a gift box:

3. Host Competitions

Hosting competitions is nothing new to marketers, but Vine does add a new spin on traditional methods. Vine is a fast way to drive engagement around their brands when used well. Remington Park, a racetrack and casino based in Oklahoma, are hosting a competition with an incentive big enough to convince people to visit them on Father's day:

There is nothing like the power of video for communication, and the Internet is a more effective vehicle for delivery than any other outlet available. iQuarius Media is an expert in every step of creating videos that deliver. To discuss how our  Web Video Production and Delivery team can help you, contact Shea Glenny at shea@iquariusmedia.com.

Does Your Business Need a Blog?

The answer is an unequivocal, YES! Blogging is the foundation to holistic content marketing campaigns and it provides a channel for developing thought leadership. Instead of being another faceless brand, you can distinguish your business by lending it your credibility and defining yourself as an authority in your industry. Our social-media driven culture is also placing new demands on brands. Customers expect higher levels of engagement with businesses because of the access that the online world provides them. If your website is static, you aren’t set apart from your competition and you’re not convincing potential clients that you are the best possible company to purchase from/work with.

Still not convinced? Here are some of the best reasons why your business needs a blog:

Blogs help raise your Internet visibility

Search engines prefer blogs over the millions upon millions of static websites out there because the content is updated regularly. As you have probably heard many times before: content is king.  You want to be featured on the first page of a Google search? A consistently updated and bustling blog is the best way to land there. Creating regular content on topics relevant to your industry increases the chance of a potential customer landing on your website.

Say you're a landscaper in Florida, creating a post about the top five ways to spend days or evenings in your garden not only advertises your services but helps those not specifically searching for a landscaper to find your company.

Blogs establish your authority

With the introduction of Google Authorship, establishing yourself (and your brand) as an authority in your industry has become obligatory. You want to be recognized as a trendsetter and thought leader among your competition, but you also want to show consumers why they should do business with you. Knowledgeable, original content proves your legitimacy while inspiring confidence in potential clients. This applies to all industries, as potential clients are more likely to do business with someone who has already established their authority.

For example, if you're a dentist, regular posts on good dental hygiene will be valuable to potential patients and lead them to believe that your knowledgeable advice leads to knowledgeable care. People directly associate your content with your abilities; you want to be in control of your image.

Blogs reflect the culture of your company & values of your brand

Gone are the days where you can just claim to offer great customer service and exceptional products. Consumers want to know specifics and they want your unique approach to business. Blogging is the perfect opportunity to infuse your personality into your company. By providing your opinions on relevant topics of interest in your industry, consumers get an understanding of the person (or people) behind your brand. This works on multiple levels.

For one, it helps consumers relate to and understand your brand. Blogging can also be a great starting point for building the reputation of your brand. For example, if you're a consultant and you have multiple articles offering free advice, you send the message that you are generous with your  expertise. Doing so also suggests that you possess such a wealth of information that there is plenty more of that same expert advice for clients who contract your services.

Blogs allow for interaction with consumers

If a potential consumer is visiting your website, you want to do everything you can to improve engagement. Static websites guarantee short visits whereas regularly updated blogs give visitors a reason to stick around. Chances are they'll comment on a post, you comment back and before you know it they're scheduling an appointment or placing an order.

Starbucks is an excellent example of increasing user engagement through blogging. While their posts are only tangentially related to coffee, Starbucks allows users to submit ideas for new drinks, food items, packages, and even store designs. They then blog about the ideas and encourage users to comment and rate the different items. This is a brilliant approach to blogging as it increases consumer engagement and creates original user-generated content.

While blogging doesn't have to be a huge undertaking, it does require some planning and commitment. The key is to post consistently. Ideally, you should post relevant content for your target audience 2-3 times a week. Not only does this keep your content fresh (and therefore more likely to appear on search engines) but also encourages a consistent following.

For more advice on successful social media marketing strategies, iQuarius Media is an expert on helping  your brand's online presence grow. Contact our Content Marketing Strategist, to discuss your blog and content marketing strategy.

Image Source: Lucy Catherine Photography

Top Ways Brands are Utilizing Social Media

If you want your business to be successful, increasing engagement with fans through social media is crucial. These articles on the updates to Instagram along with insight into how other brands are doing social media right provide the perfect foundation for increasing your brand’s online influence.

Instagram’s New Tagging Feature is Huge for Brands

Instagram has introduced a feature Facebook users are familiar with: the ability to tag photos. With “Photo's of You” users have the ability to tag photos with any other instagram user, business or product. This is big for brands as they can curate the photos tagged with their name, showcase the best photos on their stream, and tag their photos to show on other users stream. Entrepreneur.com believes that “this adds a new level of consumer reach — the feature aims to compel users to interact directly with the brands and businesses they follow.” Brands will also be able to post the same photo in a number of relevant streams, multiplying their reach with a single tag and attract fans from a wider audience.

Why Victoria's Secret is Winning at Social Media -- While Other Brands Fail

When it comes to social media, Victoria's Secret is proving quantity is as important as quality. According to Expion, a social media marketing management company, 87% of the top posts on Facebook between January 1st- March 31% were made by Victoria's secret, Walmart and Burberry. Although Victoria's Secret's scantily clad models may have something to do with their popularity, their success is largely due to product focused posts that centered on major holidays. Walmart employed a similar tactic and posted seasonal deals, in addition to humorous photos of animals the internet can't get enough of. Burberry had the highest engagement out of the top 100 brands, but Victoria's Secret beat them from the top spot by posting twice as much. The key to social media popularity is regular engagement with fans, so posting has to be both relevant and consistent.

Five Companies that Mastered Social Media's Branding Potential

Many companies struggle with finding a way to get consumers to connect with their products on social media – there's only so many ways you can talk about tampons or household appliances after all. But big brands are finding that the easiest way to be successful on social media is to allow the fans to lead the conversation. Fastcodesign.com suggests three steps to online success: Go where the people are, Have a legitimate purpose, and Be real. Consumers look to social media to find the human behind the company and find something outside of product promotion. Pepsi found that connecting to causes that supported their core values was a way to be real while encouraging fans to take action. They made their platform online more about ideas than soda, by “shifting branding focus to funding causes for social good”. This encourages fans to interact online by voting and forms a connection in the consumers mind with doing good and drinking Pepsi.

Image source: Jason A. Howie

Internet Traffic Will Quadruple in Four Years

Internet trafficSo you were just getting used to hearing data referred to in “gigabytes”, GB, or “Gigs” – and now the Internet world has moved on. We are now dealing with zettabytes of data. One zettabyte is equal to a trillion gigabytes.

According to Cisco’s Visual Networking Index Forecast and statement, there is and will be explosive global growth in Internet traffic, which is expected to quadruple by 2016. This is fueled largely by the speed at which smartphones, tablets, and Internet-enabled TVs are flying off the shelves; the growing accessibility of Wi-Fi and faster high-speed connections are all contributing factors.

Computers may have been responsible for 94 percent of consumer Internet traffic last year, but that number is expected to decrease to about 81 percent. So where’s the growth? Mobile Internet traffic – which is forecast to increase 18 times between now and 2016.

The Internet Traffic Explosion

  • 2016 will see 3.4 billion Internet users — half the world
  • More than half of global Internet traffic is expected to come from Wi-Fi
  • Average broadband speeds will nearly quadruple
  • The greatest demand for bandwidth will come from video: streaming entertainment as well as business videoconferencing

Imagine the equivalent of 278 million people simultaneously streaming an HD movie each hour. That’s where Cisco expects consumer demand to be — orders of magnitude greater than it is now. Cisco says it expects dramatic changes in “the network requirements needed to deliver on the expectations of this ‘new normal.’“

Businesses need to get mobile, connected, and visual. Reel in your Internet traffic with Video production, mobile apps, Internet marketingsocial mediablogs, and more: iQuarius Media.

Basic SEO Strategies

If you don’t plan on using the services of a specialist or establishing a budget for your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices, you definitely ought to, at a bare minimum, make a few modest changes to your website.

Small details can have a powerful effect on search engine results and you will get far more website visitors if you understand what you’re doing and why. You don’t have to be an expert to get started. You just need a a little time for researching and a few days for executing the important changes to your website.

Keyword and Key Phrase Research

The most significant component of SEO is keyword research. You will need to determine which key phrases will drive visitors to your website and start composing a handful of posts that contain those keywords. There is a fine line between providing useful content for your users and publishing an article simply because you want your website to be keyword-rich. You have to concentrate on your users, and you should not position keywords and phrases in any other sentence just because you are seeking to boost your search engine ranking.

Link Building and Development

Another significant element of SEO is link development. If your website’s hyperlink is found on numerous pages, search engines will undoubtedly recognize it. Preferably, you will receive this recognition by submitting top quality subject matter and insightful articles and observations.

Stay Real and Natural

One of the most frequent errors website owners make in SEO when attempting to strengthen their search engine positioning is going too far. You may often notice content that does not make sense because a keyword is used in every sentence; or you may notice websites that have a list containing dozens of links as a result of link exchange. You don’t have to submit your website to thousands of article directories,  and you should not concentrate on adding your links everywhere on the net. This can work against you. A single valuable link is worth more than 1,000 links on new websites, so try turning your focus to quality, not quantity. If you think about what your visitors want to see on your website and figure out a way to keep them engaged.

Keep Going.

After that, it’s a matter of keeping fresh content coming so you can get in — and stay in — Google’s sights. Preferably, you’ll push out new content every few days. If you’re a company or individual that everyone’s talking about in their blogs, in the news, in magazine articles, in interviews and reviews, that counts as fresh content. However, most of us don’t set the Internet abuzz like that on a regular basis. We need to send out our own material and toot our own horns to get Google and the other search engines to take notice. And all this content needs to be tagged, keyworded, and promoted. Fresh content every few days — or more frequently, if you have the time.

On second thought, do you have the time? Don’t you have a business to run?

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