LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, Reddit, etc. The number of social media outlets is proliferating and yet, each one has a different audience, a different way to engage, and different measures of success. To better understand how to tap into the potential of Instagram, one of the newer social media vehicles, I sought out advice from Apu Gupta. Gupta is the CEO of Curalate, a company that helps brands like Neiman Marcus, Urban Outfitters and BuzzFeed make sense of and leverage visual sites like Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram.
What are the challenges that the new(er) social media vehicles, like Instagram, etc. pose marketers?
Instagram, Pinterest, and other visual social media outlets have become a major driver of engagement for brands. However, until recently, marketing teams as a whole have struggled to justify, through traffic and other meaningful KPIs, effort to engage with consumers on these newer platforms. The problem is always one of resources. How many resources should be allocated to new “channels” that are unproven and sometimes difficult to measure? What has been needed is an easy way to measure the effectiveness of these vehicles.
What are the top three mistakes marketers make when it comes to social media?
1. Siloed social strategies.
Today’s consumer is 24/7 and lives in an omni-channel world. To remain top-of-mind, it’s imperative that brands maintain a strong presence across the visual web, not just on any single social channel. This is the first and most important step in establishing a fully integrated marketing strategy that drives awareness and action at every stage of the customer journey.
2. Overlooking the customer’s point of view.
Historically, conversations around products and services were driven by the brand, whether through marketing or PR. This is no longer the case. Technology today is sophisticated to the point that consumers have become co-creators, crafting stories around brands and publishing them out to the world. And the user-generated content (UGC) that is being shared is oftentimes more creative, compelling and authentic than anything a brand could otherwise produce on their own.
3. Viewing UGC as a purely social function.
Building off the last point, brands should be investing in ways to integrate their fans’ photos throughout broader marketing initiatives, including emails, digital ads, and especially their websites. When consumers are exposed to UGC in the ecommerce environment, it provides the social proof needed to engage longer. Curalate client Rebecca Minkoff, for example, has seen an 11% increase in time-on-site and an average click-through-rate of 20% since bringing fans’ images onto their website (brief case study is available here).
The explosion of social media sites has made the CMO's job more challenging. What advice do you have for CMOs regarding how to prioritize and focus resources?
Social engagement has skyrocketed in recent years, but what’s particularly noteworthy is that earned media is becoming a much more dominant driver of overall interactions. What this means is that brands are present across the social web whether they have an official account or not. Against a backdrop like this, it becomes increasingly important for brands to develop and shape their owned social presence on these networks. Rather than adopting point solutions, forward-thinking CMOs should be looking to vendors who can consolidate networks, with an emphasis on differentiating owned and earned media.
Any specific recommendations about how to take advantage of visual sites like Pinterest, Tumblr, and Instagram?
The visual web is giving us deeper insight into consumer preference than ever before. Pay attention to which of your brand’s images are organically trending on these visual sites to more accurately predict which of your creative assets will drive engagement on other digital properties. For instance, if a department store sees a spike in the pinning of pink espresso machines leading up to October, the team might also consider featuring that item in digital ads, their weekly newsletter, and on their homepage. It should also be incorporated into your sales forecast.
Finally, how can marketers do a better job of measuring efficacy?
There are different companies that provide solutions but the key is to drive consumers from Instagram, for example, to an online environment. That enables marketers to think about Instagram in terms of traffic, time-on-site, pageviews, and even revenue. While many companies have solutions, Curalate launched a new product – called Like2Buy – this year designed to help marketers address this need.
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