William Exchange

The terms augmented reality and virtual reality marketing might conjure images of Pokemon Go or immersive video game experiences, but AR and VR are more than tools for the gaming industry – they are fast becoming powerful marketing tools for forward-thinking brands. In the future, as AR and VR adoption continues to grow, they will likely become essential to a comprehensive digital marketing strategy. In this article we’re looking at ways companies can use AR and VR to their advantage, and exploring examples of brands that have launched successful, creative campaigns using the technology. What are AR and VR?   Before we delve into the details of the use cases for AR and VR in a marketing strategy, it’s helpful to remind ourselves what these technologies are and how they’re most commonly utilized. Augmented reality is “an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real-world are enhanced by computer-generated...

With elections looming in the UK and US, social media companies are still failing to deal with manipulation on their platforms, NATO-backed researchers have concluded.  The NATO Strategic Communication Centre of Excellence - an independent organization that advises NATO - bought social media engagement for 105 different posts across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram over a three-month period. In total, it spent around $333 with 11 Russian and five European companies that sell fake social media engagement, netting 3,500 comments, 25,000 likes, 20,000 views and 5,000 followers. The team then identified the 18,739 accounts that were being used to deliver the fake engagement and reported them to the four platforms concerned - only to find that, three weeks later, 95 per cent of the accounts were still active. "This means that malicious activity conducted by other actors using the same services and the same accounts also went unnoticed," the autho...

Social media is one of today’s most promising lead generation tools - but not just for its exposure and promotion capability. Many entrepreneurs credit social media connections as one of the top sources for leads. And the way to forge this connection? Via social media messaging.  However, there are tactful ways to go about messaging strangers on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. These tips will help you maneuver the incredible possibilities of “DM’ing” and ensure a higher lead conversion rate, meaning you spend less time on marketing and more time on making your new clients happy. 1. Personalize Your Message Because of the sheer number of ideal clients available online, many businesses make the mistake of doing the ‘copy and paste’ method - quickly sending out generic sales messages to everyone they can. While this method can certainly save time, it also results in far lower conversion rates - because no one wants to reply to a direct message that...

Brief: Imgur, the image-sharing app with 300 million users, introduced an app for gamers called Melee: Gaming Communities. The app lets gamers and esports fans watch gaming highlights, follow top gamers, discuss their favorite games and see reviews, videos and trending memes, per a blog post. Melee users can vote on posts they like, helping others to discover trending memes that are related to gaming, including video games, board games and role-playing games like "Dungeons & Dragons." Melee users also can join online communities by following game titles — everything from multiplayer videogames like "Fortnite" to board games like Scrabble. Melee is available to download for free from Apple's App Store, and will expand to Android during the first quarter of next year and to desktop later. Melee is integrated with Twitch, the livestreaming platform aimed at gamers, VentureBeat reported. Insight: Imgur's creation of Melee could...

Social media professionals working at B2B brands face many of the same challenges as their B2C and nonprofit counterparts: increasing engagement, building awareness and building audiences. Still, there are some roadblocks unique to the B2B space, from using social to win customers for big-ticket items (e.g., million dollar software deals) to translating complex technical language into accessible messages. Our sister publication, The Social Shake-Up, recently hosted a webinar featuring four speakers working at B2B companies: Dan Zucker, director of paid and social media at Bentley Systems (an infrastructure design firm), Christina Warner, associate marketing manager at Walgreens, Nicole Shevlin, brand strategist at IBM and Blair Broussard, chief operations and people officer at ARPR (a PR agency with B2B tech clients). Here are some of their top takeaways from the event. Conduct a frequent review of the content calendar.  Zucker says he meets with his team e...

The word “engagement” gets thrown around so often, it's become nearly meaningless in the social media world. And, while most buzzwords come and go, real engagement is a long-term play. If you're not seeing a lot of engagement from your Facebook posts, tweets or product pictures on Instagram, you may want to take another look at your long-term strategy. True audience engagement isn’t easy, and it takes a long time to see results. Here are some ways you can engage with your audience, while encouraging them to respond: Ask questions. People like to share opinions. This could not be truer than online. Perhaps it’s being in the comfort of familiar surroundings. Perhaps it’s that when you're on your phone, you feel bolder and more confident about tweeting statements you might keep to yourself at a dinner party. What matters is that by asking a question, you invite others in. One of the most effective prompts is, “What do you think about _____?” Ask question...

Get better results and maximize your budget by keeping things simple. PPC managers make unnecessarily hard work out of keyword research. Yes, that’s a bold statement to make. But it’s one we’re making nevertheless. Don’t get us wrong, this isn’t meant to start a fight. Nor are we implying that PPC managers are no longer needed, because that’s simply not true. In fact, it’s something we’ve covered before explaining why PPC agencies are not dying out.   As long as there are PPC campaigns, there will be PPC managers. They play an essential role in creating, running and optimising campaigns to ensure businesses get the best results for their budget. That doesn’t mean every PPC manager is perfect. The truth is that most of you are caught out by overcomplicating many areas of your disipline, including the keyword research stage. Keyword research is always worth your time Without research, it’s impossible to build a viable list of keywords that will bring in the...