Cohn and Wolfe Blog: Social Media in a Regulated Environment – Panel Insights

Last month I had the pleasure of moderating a panel called “Something Regulated” hosted by Digital Somethings, Business Development Institute, and Pfizer. The panel consisted of a dynamic group of communicators responsible for driving social media in their organizations...Cohn and Wolfe Blog Posts by Chad Latz

Cohn and Wolfe Blog Posts: Social Behavior vs. Social Media

It’s easy to forget that the term “social” is as much intended to describe behavior as it is a reference to the media or platform. In the May issue of PRWeek, I had the pleasure of sharing my perspective on the best way to incorporate offline experiences into a social media strategy to encourage engagement. As I was thinking it over, perhaps the real question was “How can social media create engagement in a way that produces offline behavior?”

It is important to remember to develop strategies by first abandoning your enthusiasm for the platforms and instead examine what you know about the social behavior of the target audience. What can we glean from their online conversations, content consumption, click paths, daily activities or the way in which they navigate physical space? These questions allow you to create programs that facilitate natural interaction between audience and brand in a way that encourages sharing across the social Web. Stay focused on the desired behavior that supports your business objectives. Determine the thing of value or utility that you can offer your audience to encourage that behavior and then finally select the social platform to best enable that result.* Chad Latz's blog. Cohn and Wolfe Blog Posts

Cohn and Wolfe Blog: Promoted Tweets – Essential for Marketers?

Much has been written about the roll-out of ‘Promoted Tweets,’ Twitter’s new advertising feature. Many are discussing the business model and debating if/how advertising will impact the platform’s user experience. I had the pleasure attending the debut of Promoted Tweets by Dick Costolo, COO of Twitter at the AdAge Digital Conference 2010.

If you’re unfamiliar with how Promoted Tweets work, they have the same attributes of normal Tweets, however they are displayed in Twitter Search results rather than in the context of conversations. Twitter has initially chosen to do this because it is less disruptive to the user experience. Twitter’s cautious approach is an acknowledgement of the consideration that they give to users. It will, at least in this phase, be a disadvantage to marketers and communicators given that Twitter Search only makes up a small portion (approx. 3%) of Twitter’s overall traffic. Marketers want to be where the action is and will want to promote in a manner that is contextually relevant to users. Within Twitter, the action (reach and relevance) is within individual user timelines. Twitter is eventually planning on integrating Promoted Tweets into the individual timelines, but it’s important that they do this in a very measured, contextually relevant manner – or risk upsetting an already sensitive user base.

Promoted Tweets, once rolled out into individual timelines will be a powerful mechanism for raising visibility of brands and messages to consumers, not only for marketing and campaign visibility, but also as a rapid response strategy for managing a company’s reputation during a crisis.

Twitter has admitted that they are very much in the experimental stage of Promoted Tweets and they are piloting with a handful of big brands such as Virgin Atlantic and Starbucks. While early adopters of Promoted Tweets are getting some visibility in the media, most brands may want to wait and evaluate both the adoption curve as well as consumer/community backlash on inserting advertising into the very personal conversations that are had online. Once Promoted Tweets have been integrated into individual timelines with the ability to target content based on conversation, and it is clear that these practices have been accepted by the public, then it may make more sense to jump in.Cohn and Wolfe Blog