Trends

Summer of Social Media Trends: Live Video, Search & Explore and Project Lightning News

July 22, 2015 by The Motherhood

While summer is a time for relaxation and vacations, new social media trends continue to crop up, and activity isn’t slowing down! In fact, people share 22 percent more frequently during the summer than in any other season. It has been a big summer in the social media world. Read about latest updates and trends in The Motherhood’s Social Media Round-Up below!

Meerkat’s cameo feature is bringing new ways to unite brands and influencers through real-time video. This feature allows a user to invite watchers to take over his or her live stream for up to 60 seconds, then notify his or her Twitter followers and Facebook friends about the cameo.

Source: The Next Web

This has huge potential to get influencers and their followers involved in real-time conversations with brands, and provides a new interactive alternative to Twitter parties.

Did you know that 63 percent of Facebook and Twitter users turn to social media to stay current on live events and hot-button issues, outside those related to friends and family? That number is sure to grow with Twitter’s fresh news feature, Project Lightning (name subject to change). The new service will allow anyone (Twitter users or not) to view a feed of tweets, images and videos about live events as they happen, curated by employees with “newsroom experience.”

Source: BuzzFeed

Project Lightning will unlock never-before-reached potential for brands, too. Users will potentially be able to follow events without following other users, allowing brand tweets to be blended into several timelines and, more importantly, reach those who aren’t Twitter users.

Instagram is changing the way people use the app by allowing users to step out of their bubble and into trending topics and places. In late June, Instagram rolled out features including a new Search & Explore feature, which makes finding interesting and trending photos from all over the world easier.

“The new Explore now surfaces trends as they emerge in real-time, connecting you to events and conversations both near you and around the globe,” the company wrote on its blog.

Source: Fast Company

Brands can capitalize on these new features, and the massive (100 percent) organic reach and high engagement of Instagram by getting involved with the latest trends.

Which of these features do you think are here to stay? Let us know in the comments!

Wearable technology industry expands for women’s health

June 29, 2015 by The Motherhood

As we predicted earlier this year, wearable technology continues to be a hot item in 2015. As smart wearables continue to become more stylish, the creators are making other changes to their devices, specifically with women in mind.

In the past year, many voices have addressed the issue that wearable technology, especially health trackers, seemed to ignore the needs of women. They claimed that not only were the size and style of wearables not female-friendly, but also that the functionality of the devices excluded features useful to women. Take Apple’s HealthKit app, released in fall 2014, which included capabilities for tracking diet, activity, sleep and more. According to many of its users, it left one very important thing out: a female reproductive tracker.

This year, we can’t help but notice how wearable technology is responding and adjusting for women.

One example that has gained significant media attention is Bellabeat’s LEAF. Bellabeat is known for the SHELL, a device allowing pregnant moms to hear, record and share her baby’s heartbeat. The company introduced the LEAF earlier this month, and it sold out the first batch — 10,000 wearables within the first 48 hours! This stylish, smart jewelry can be worn as a necklace, bracelet or clip and tracks women’s stress, activity, sleep and reproductive health, and provides real-time feedback through its app.

Smart wearables for women are showing up in the form of clothing as well. Just take a look at the new Sensilk’s Fight Tech smart bra that measures women’s heart rate, respiratory rate and calories burned during a workout.

And finally, Apple will be adding women health features to the HealthKit App in the Fall 2015 iOS 9 update. We expect to see more changes like these this year!

Do you use wearable tech or smart jewelry? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

New in Social Media: Buyable Pins and Targeting Features

June 5, 2015 by The Motherhood

Pinterest and Instagram had a big week in the social media world. Read what they have in store in The Motherhood’s social media round-up!

Pinterest to Enter E-commerce Sector with Buyable Pins

Pinterest’s long-awaited ‘buyable pins’ feature was announced earlier this week, providing an option for users to browse and purchase items directly on the social media site.

Pretty soon, iOS products will begin to show blue ‘buy it’ buttons on pins from retailers like Macy’s and Neiman Marcus, and consumers will be able to purchase products with a credit card or Apple Pay. Users will even be able to search for products by price.

Pinterest founder and CEO Ben Silbermann said, “Pinterest is already designed to work like a catalogue, so we wanted to find a way to weave buyable pins into the pages people already know. Buyable pins are a simple and secure way to buy the products you love right from inside Pinterest.”

Photo Credit: Pinterest

Pinterest will not receive a profit from items sold through the new feature, nor will merchants be charged a fee to use the platform. Pinterest hopes this model will generate revenue by selling promoted buyable pins and ads.

Instagram Announces Direct-Response Ads, New Targeting Features

Instagram continues to build momentum with its ad platforms and is looking to offer more business-driven results for advertisers. The photo-sharing site plans to roll out ads that will allow its users to take action directly on a single-photo ad by signing up on a website, purchasing a product or downloading an app.

Like its parent company Facebook, Instagram will begin targeting consumers based on demographics and interests, allowing advertisers to reach niche audiences on the app.

Similarly, Instagram will follow in Facebook’s footsteps and use their infrastructure for buying, managing and measuring of ads’ success on the app. Instagram plans to make their advertising features available through an Instagram Ads API and Facebook ad buying interfaces.

Tell us your thoughts on these developments in the comments!

Takeaways from Chicago’s Social Media Strategies Summit

May 6, 2015 by The Motherhood

Last week, The Motherhood attended the Social Media Strategies Summit in Chicago, where industry leaders shared strategies, trends and great examples of social media at work.

Read on for some of our top takeaways from the event:

Start by Listening

One of the most prevalent themes of the summit was listening. As Dan Soschin, Vice President of Marketing at The Ultimate Medical Academy, said during his session on effective customer service: “Every good conversation starts with listening.”

Whether you’re building your corporate or personal brand, looking for the next great campaign idea or trying to resolve a customer dispute, active listening via social can help you understand your industry’s landscape and develop the right strategy for engaging in a conversation (or knowing when to keep quiet).

Some helpful (and free) social listening tools include IceRocket, HootSuite and TweetDeck, and even good, old-fashioned Google search and alerts.

Not sure what to listen for? Put yourself in the mindset of your customer by taking the time to create a journey map (check out this article for more). This exercise can uncover listening terms, new opportunities and avenues for engaging with your audience and insights on how your audience interacts–or how they want to interact–with you and your competitors.

Shape Your Content

The Clorox Company shared a shining example of how listening can effectively shape content strategy during the Summit. Wanting to engage millennials, the company keyed in to that audience’s online behaviors, and also the white space where their company could fill the void. Their insights led them to build Gather, a destination for millennials to get and share ideas for social gatherings, inspired by life stages and what’s trending. In six weeks alone, the site generated more than 428,000 impressions.

Laura Wilson, Director of Digital Engagement & Social Media at Georgetown University, also shared some helpful tips on sharing stories that stick:

Always stay authentic to your brand and voice.
Keep it simple.
Ensure it has structure. If something doesn’t add to your story, it detracts from it.
Focus on making a connection and a memory.
Create stories with the intention of involving others, so that their interaction becomes part of the overall story (and results in sharing).

Twitter’s own Gina Ballenger said to “create repeatable brilliance.” If you’ve found a format or a theme that resonates with your audience, build on that by repeating it and turning it into an episodic series.

“Content is King, but Distribution is Queen and She Wears the Pants.”

With so many social media platforms, and more inevitably emerging, it can be overwhelming to know where to communicate what. It’s true that the right distribution is integral to any social strategy, but as many speakers affirmed, you don’t need to be all things to all people.

So what works?

Leveraging the power of social stars (like The Motherhood’s network of incredible online influencers!) is key. When it comes to working with ideal influencers to carry your message, Ballenger made a great point that our team passionately agrees with: instead of looking solely at their reach, choose target-right stars who resonate with your audience.

Andrea Leitch, National Geographic Travel’s Digital Director, also shared what platforms work best for their content, including Instagram and Facebook. With the largest number of Instagram followers in the world for a non-celebrity account, National Geographic is clearly doing something right.

For more takeaways from the Chicago Social Media Strategies Summit, and to stay on top of future events, follow the #SMSSummit hashtag.

Industry News Round Up: Facebook and Instagram Updates

March 26, 2015 by The Motherhood

It’s been a busy week for Facebook and Instagram. In case you haven’t had a chance to delve into the latest news, here’s a quick summary:

Three upcoming changes for Facebook

We may start to see news content hosted inside of Facebook, instead of links that direct users to another media site. This will make consuming content on Facebook more seamless, especially for those accessing it on mobile devices. Some initial media partners will include The New York Times, BuzzFeed and National Geographic.
And while we’re all familiar with Facebook’s autoplay videos, the company is looking to take autoplay to the next level. This new feature will automatically play another related video when the one you’re watching is done — similar to how Netflix automatically plays the next episode of a series you’re watching.
Furthermore, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced at the F8 Developer Conference on Wednesday that the company will be turning its Facebook Messenger into a platform. When it launches, more than 40 third-party apps will be available to download directly from Facebook Messenger, allowing users to send one another not just texts, but GIFs, music, videos and more.

Through a new feature called Messenger Business, Facebook will also aim to replace work-related emails with Messenger. This means email addresses won’t be needed for common online business interactions such as sending direct messages, making reservations and checking business order statuses. Launch dates for these new features have not yet been confirmed, but look for them in the next couple of months!

Facebook Learn How — Photo source: Facebook

Facebook introduces educational resource for marketers

Do you advertise your brand on Facebook? If so, you might want to check out Blueprint: a new educational resource for advertising on Facebook. Released this Wednesday, Blueprint offers more than 35 online courses and includes in-person training and certification. This resource lets advertisers explore Facebook’s campaign optimization offerings, video ad options and effective ad measurement tools at their own pace. Anyone with a Facebook account can access Blueprint via desktop or mobile device.

If you’re a small business owner, Facebook created Learn How with you in mind. This new online learning center helps small businesses do more with their Facebook Pages and Ads. Facebook built the Learn How page to be flexible, saying marketers can “use it to cover a topic in-depth, or as a reference library to cover questions as they come up.” Like Blueprint, this resource is also available on desktop and mobile. To stay on top of Facebook marketing changes, follow the updated Facebook Business website.

With more than two million businesses advertising on the social media network, it appears Facebook saw the opportunity to improve their experience by creating a hub of information and answers for online marketers of both large and small businesses. Smart move!

Instagram rolls out new collage app

On Tuesday, Instagram rolled out a new app, Layout from Instagram, a feature that allows users to create collages of their photos. We love how incredibly simple it is to use this app! Unlike other photo collage apps, however, there are no filter, text or border color options.

While most third-party collage apps require users to choose the collage format before selecting the pictures, Layout does the opposite. Users simply click photos from their library (up to nine) that they wish to include in a collage, then choose the format from a variety of options.

Here’s an example of what it looks like:

After creating a collage, users can easily share their creations to their social media platforms.

Easy, right? First Lady Michelle Obama has already used the app, as have brands such as Sephora and Victoria’s Secret.

You can currently download this app for free in iTunes, and Layout will be available to Android users in the coming months.

Trends Round-Up: Super Bowl XLIX Ads

February 2, 2015 by The Motherhood

Super Bowl XLIX wasn’t just a big win for the New England Patriots – many brands and themes generated a lot of buzz during last night’s game! Last week, we rounded up and shared a few ad trend predictions. Now that the ad frenzy is behind us, we can offer a few highlights about what proved effective for many brands during Super Bowl XLIX.

1. “Dadvertising” continues to be a powerful ad trend

From Nissan to Dove, “dadvertising” was a major theme of the Super Bowl XLIX ads. These commercials tugged the heartstrings to target dads with messaging traditionally reserved for moms, reflecting the modern view that dads are taking a more active role in the household and becoming major purchasers. Brands are taking notice.

From Dove+Care's "Real Strength" — From Dove+Care’s “Real Strength”

2. Twitter and Facebook see highest Super Bowl numbers ever

Both Twitter and Facebook reached record-setting milestones during Super Bowl XLIX. Last night’s game was the most tweeted Super Bowl in history and saw the highest level of conversation during a Super Bowl on Facebook. Here’s a short comparison on how each platform performed last night:

On Facebook, 65 million people generated 265 million posts, comments and likes about the Super Bowl
Twitter streamed 28.4 million tweets about Super Bowl XLIX (last year’s game saw 25 million tweets)
Fifty percent of Super Bowl XLIX ads used hashtags, while Facebook was mentioned four times in ads
Women aged 25-34 and women aged 35-44 were the top represented demographic groups in Super Bowl XLIX’s Facebook conversation

Snapchat also made its Super Bowl debut last night during the “Pitch Perfect 2” ad. The app recently launched the Discover feature, which it describes as “a new way to explore Stories from different editorial teams.”

3. Brands channel positivity and emotion in Super Bowl XLIX ads

Many ads last night focused on sending positive, emotional messages to consumers as opposed to using humor or shock value. According to Ace Metrix, a TV analytics company that scores ads by viewer sentiment, the top-ranking ads of the night went to McDonald’s “Pay with Lovin,” Budweiser’s “Lost Dog” and Coca-Cola’s “#MakeItHappy.” McDonald’s “Pay with Lovin” received an ace score of 706, one of the highest Super Bowl Ace Scores of all time, and 21 percent above the category norm for Quick Service Restaurants.

Ace Metrix CEO Peter Daboll said, “McDonald’s is on trend with messages of positivity that really resonate with consumers. For the past few years, we’ve seen a pivotal shift away from sheer shock value and slapstick humor toward emotional connectivity in Super Bowl ads. There were a banner crop of ads this year – from brands like McDonald’s, Always, Budweiser, and Coca-Cola – that are continuing to embrace this emotional connection.”

What were your favorite ads of the night?