I’m an avid Facebook user – mostly to stay in touch with friends and family scattered throughout the country and globe and to satisfy the voyeur in me to see where other’s lives have taken them. I also use it as a vehicle to post interesting stories I come across, promotion of certain media activities I’m involved in, and (selfishly) to showcase some of the cool things I get to participate in as a result of my job. I always wonder how many people actually click on those items I post and if there is an optimal day to actually post them for the best response. Well, it appears that there is – according to ViTrue, Tuesday is the day…actually Tuesday and Wednesday are neck and neck for optimal timing, with a sharp decline as you move later in the week.
This is an important concept for brands when deciding how to launch new updates to their fan pages or go live with new applications on Facebook, as hi-lighted by ViTrue CEO Reggie Bradford, “This highlights the importance for marketers of having a well thought-out communication strategy for updating their brand page and when to create wall posts to get the optimum response” (quote courtesy to MediaPost). This is not to say that you need to ONLY launch on a Tuesday or Wednesday as there is a certain amount of guesswork involved with the actual calculation, however it appears that mid-week updates will provide you with the best success. Keep that in mind when you next have the urge to go live with an update to your company’s fan page on a Friday. More likely than not, your audience is thinking about their evening plans and what their ‘real’ friends are doing as they head into the weekend.
David Veneski Social Media Facebook
I’m in the digital media business and there are many days where I am exposed to innovative digital opportunities. When I think of display advertising, more often than not, innovation does not come to mind. Today, that changed with the introduction of FM Ad STAMP (well – I actually saw this last week but I was sworn to secrecy by the smart account types over @ Federated Media). My description won’t do it justice so I encourage you to check out their overview page, blog post, and screencast.
My quick take? This is going to change display advertising for the better. I think FM did a great job taking into account ‘how’ people are using the web, social networks, and reacting to ads put in front of them by giving marketers a product that provides an ‘engagement’ opportunity with valued customers. I think the Conversationalist “a 600×250 social ad unit that allows brand advertisers to engage their readers in conversation directly within the ad unit via social media tools like corporate and product blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook fan pages, RSS feeds, syndicated content and more…” is brilliant – hat tip to FM for recognizing the need for display advertising innovation and delivering an exceptional product.
David Veneski Online Advertising, Social Media Ad Stamp, Display Ads, Federated Media
I’ve commented before at how adept Vitamin Water is with regard to creating social interactions with their customers. Today they turned to their Facebook community to decide the next flavor with the help of a new app called the “Flavor Creator” (image below). The name is a bit misleading in that the app won’t actually let the community ‘create’ the flavor but will let the active Vitamin Water ‘fans’ participate in the rise of flavors for consideration through their social media activities – such as tweets/searches/image posts, etc. Extending the social interaction, they are also allowing their Facebook fans to connect and collaborate on the design of the bottle for the new flavor – right down to the catch phrase describing that flavor.
Clearly Vitamin Water and their parent company, Glaceau, understand their customer and their tendencies extremely well – as noted here:
“We’re basically handing over the control and the lab coat to our fans,” said Eric Berniker, a senior vice president of marketing for Vitaminwater. “It’s one of the hottest brands with youth, and of course, Facebook is a great way to connect with them.” (credit WSJ for this quote).
So let’s recap. Understand who your customer is, give them a modest amount of control over a product they love, and provide an environment where they can connect with others to evangelize your brand. Other companies should take notice of this community connection – it’s working for Vitamin Water.
David Veneski Advertising, Community, Social Media Crowdsource, Vitamin Water
Business Week just released a report on the ‘Best Places to Launch a Career in 2009‘ – Intel is ranked #20, up from #38 in 2008. They used the following methodology to determine rankings:
“First, we surveyed career services directors at U.S. colleges to learn which employers were tops on their lists. We asked those employers to complete a survey on their hiring, pay, benefits, and training programs, which we then compared with others in the same industry. Finally, we obtained from Universum USA, a Philadelphia research company, the results of its 2009 survey of more than 60,000 U.S. undergraduates, who were asked to identify their five most desirable employers. The employer survey counts for 50% of the final ranking, while the career services and student surveys count for 25% each.“
I’ve been at Intel for 10 years and have had a variety of jobs while here – my current role being by far my most rewarding. If you’d like to find out more about the company that pays my salary, you can follow our jobs organization on Twitter, or check out our careers site. Business Week also has some good profile data. Yes – it’s true – all of us sit in cubes, so if you’re seeking that big corner office overlooking the Silicon Valley, look elsewhere…even Andy Grove had a cube.
David Veneski Intel Career, Intel
Recently I had the opportunity to share some thoughts with Jim Hopkinson of the Hopkinson Report about my vision of the future of advertising and the effect of social media on that traditional craft. I’ve done a fair bit of public speaking, but this is my first podcast and it was great to do – Jim is good at his trade. I’d like to think that I represented a collective vision for all the smart people at Intel that are doing breakthrough work in the advertising and social media space. If you have a spare twenty minutes and care to gain some insight on my thoughts, give a listen or download from iTunes for your next commute. In addition, if you’d like to read the full transcript instead of taking in the audio stream, that’s available on the site as well.
David Veneski Advertising, Social Media, Traditional Media Advertising, Hopkinson Report, Social Media