Social Networking

The Instagram Ikea Catalog.

here is an interesting use of Instagram in terms of advertising without feeling quite so much like an ad or an online catalog.

Ikea Russia created an “Instagram Catalog Website” for a 34 piece designer collection of products. The Instagram account used the tagging feature to promote items and encouraged followers to share images and videos of their own Ikea PS 2014 products using the same hash tags. The campaign snagged over 15,000 followers in less than a week. With the “Instagram Catalog Website” functioning much like a microsite, the cross linking feature allowed each product to build out it’s own Instagram microsite for each product. The social sharing users generate with their own photos tagged with the product’s Instagram name allowed the campaign to go viral.

Oh and the cost was marginal for Ikea Russia.

“Building Social Brands” Slideshare and a Free eBook.

As social media has become a marketing and branding powerhouse in the last decade, for many there is a general belief that if you build it, they will come. That social media is the marketing panacea that will make your brand a standout in the marketplace. The truth is, it’s far more difficult than you think, and there are rules of engagement with your target audience that will help build your social brand.

Below is a really solid SlideShare presentation on the key building blocks of a social brand. In it you’ll find great information from the guys at WeAreSocial, about how brands drive conversation, building digital communities, adding value to conversation, going mobile, and much more. There is a link on slide 3 to download the free eBook that accompanies this deck as well. Or if you just want to download the book and skip the deck you can get it here.

The Social Media Life Cycle.

The image below from the Social Media Center provides an insight into the process of converting content and conversations – via transactions – into recommendations. The graphic shows that the real power is found in earned media. With 92 percent of trust recommendations coming from friends and relatives. In addition to that 92 percent, another 70 percent of social media content viewers trust online reviews by other consumers according to Nielsen’s Global Trust in Advertising Report 2012. If you do anything with social media in the world of marketing and advertising, the image below is worth taking a look at.