The microsite is dying, only most clients and (traditional above-the-line) agencies have not woken up to this yet. Adam Ostrow asks Is Social Media making corporate websites irrelevant? I agree with him and with We Are Social and say microsites are being killed off by social media (and search). Even David Armano just killed his website. Microsites are usually part of the silo’d channel marketing that clients (and some agencies) seem to love. So to have a brand campaign, you put out a TVC, some print ads, outdoor and then online is just the tacked on afterthought – and its usually the “matching baggage” banner advertising, and the microsite. Microsites exist because of a need for a campaign extension: a place to enter a competition, a place to go to when you’ve clicked on a banner to “find out more”, sometimes it’s a story that continues on from a television commercial. Except in most cases there’s not enough story to keep people hanging around to engage at all.
social media
8 reasons to use Twitter in promotions
When I was doing my 10 Twitter Strategies for Australian Brands post, I found a cracker of brand and promotion campaign on Twitter called iSpyLevis. The premise is very simple: the person running the Twitter account goes out to an inner city location every day, posting pictures of where they are. When a Twitter follower recognises her/him, they get free jeans. About 8 pairs of jeans are given away every day, in different styles, men’s and women’s. I notice that its been building followers steadily, and now the Sydney tweeters are noticing and interacting
10 Twitter strategies for Australian brands
With all the mentions of Twitter in mainstream media, one could be turned off by the hype but Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networks in Australia. Twitter is also very adaptable to long term strategies in social media marketing and there are some brands that use it well, and others who are virtually invisible.
I’ve identified 10 Twitter strategies now being used by Australian brands. I’ve divided them up arbitrarily into “Talking” and “Listening” and low interaction (one way) and higher engagement (two way interaction) and plotted some of the types (and the examples) in a matrix diagram.
Social Media Club Sydney plays nice
Authenticity and Transparency in Social Media Part 1 from SocialMediaClub Sydney on Vimeo.
We got over the hurdle of the initial Social Media Club Sydney inaugural event with a packed house of people who came to see Adam Ferrier talk about the Naked Communications Witchery Man “Girl in the Jacket” campaign and Leslie Nassar talk about his alter ego, the fake Stephen Conroy.
Beach Meet was on the week before and there were waves of hostility directed at PR agencies (accused of hijacking Twitter) and Social Media Club Sydney (accused of random stuff) was at an all time high. So much so that Kelly Tall was prompted to name the Twitter/blogosphere sniping and bitchiness a “feral sandpit”
Leslie already had a cult Twitter following, so he was likely to be OK. Given that the Witchery Man launch had already copped it on from the social media set, as well as digital marketing/regular advertising commentary, we were all steeling ourselves for some serious stoushing.
We never expected what happened.
Is it customer service if you’re not a customer?
When you’re interacting with brands using social media marketing: is it customer service if you’re not a customer?
With all the brands using social media to outreach and build up relationships, there are many paths to becoming a customer beyond the traditional one to many, company to customer “traditional” marketing model. Social media is causing a major rethink of the one way conversation. I found this great summary of the degrees of relationships in social media marketing…
Jetstar’s 5 cent fail sale
Like all Jetstar members who’d opted in to their communications, I was sent 2 eDMs hyping up a sale which started at 10pm tonight. Here’s the web version of the eDM promising 5 c seats from Melbourne to Hobart and Brisbane to Newcastle and Gold Coast to Sydney.
So what was the catch? The only way you could book was clicking on the link from the eDM or the webpage version. And of course thousands of people were trying to book in the hour or so the offer was available. Of those thousands who tried to access the site, they were presented with a website fail screen, prompting very vocal negative responses on Twitter.