Tag: Instagram

6 Events at #SMWNYC Hosted by Industry Experts in Online Video

Posted on by Erica Perry

You’ve likely realized how often you see visual content in your News Feed, timeline, and social feeds. Facebook’s video offerings expanded (now with livestreaming), and platforms like Snapchat and Periscope show no signs of slowing down in terms of popularity, cultural influence, and personal interactions.

At SMW New York, several sessions are lined up to help those looking to learn more about today’s video content ecosystem, and hear from industry’s leaders on how they approach video strategy, budget, goals, and measurement of the content.

Additionally, attendees will gain a detailed understanding of technology’s impact on the entertainment world, and how to use video tools and services to their full capacity in order to successfully engage with key audiences.

Click here to sign up for SMW New York, and join our community this February 22-26

1. Keynote Comedy: A Love Story With Evan Shapiro, Featuring Dan Harmon, Jonah Ray and Kulap Vilaysack

(Hosted by NBCUniversal)
This session, led by NBCUniversal’s EVP, Digital Enterprises, Evan Shapiro will discuss topics of comedy, technology, and social media’s impact on entertainment.

2. Building a Great Social Presence the Resourceful Way

(Hosted by BuzzFeed)
This presentation will focus on offering participants a new way at looking to hire social candidates, the best ways to manage a social editor’s workflow, and how to create sharable content without a sizable budget through a discussion of how two BuzzFeed social gurus rethought the industry.

3. Funny & Buzzy: How Comedy Central Gets Fans Talking With CMO, Walter Levitt

(Hosted by WOMMA)
In this entertaining session, Comedy Central’s CMO Walter Levitt will attempt to organize and rationalize the social media and on-the-ground tactics of Comedy Central’s marketing team into a fully thought–out strategy.

4. Reach New Viewers! Develop Superfans! Impact Ratings! Launch A TV Show Via Social Media!

(Hosted by VaynerMedia)
This masterclass will detail how efficient, strategic media spend, time-shifting strategies and always-on content with a consistent voice can combine to increase buzz, awareness, and viewership (both linear and elsewhere like video-on-demand), with concrete, indisputable results.

5. Building A Startup Under The Infrastructure And Data Of A Legacy Media Company: A Great Big Story

(Hosted by Great Big Story)
In this session, you’ll learn how to build a content strategy that’s informed by data taken straight from your social media properties. Find out the secrets that can harness your data for audience targeting, distribution and much more. Great Big Story, a socially-distributed video network that covers stories, will lead this talk.

6. How 360° Video is Changing the Content Game

(Hosted by BOLD Worldwide)
Brian Cristiano, CEO of BOLD Worldwide will explain the value, excitement and execution of 360° video through an in-depth discussion and real-life examples. Attendees will walk away with a deep understanding of the technology, why brands need to use it and how to leverage social media to drive interaction.

Register to attend today, and join us in New York this February 22-26 to hear from visionary speakers, industry leading brands, and thousands of New York’s media and technology professionals.

How to Win at Instagram

Posted on by Jenni Dawes

Patrick Janelle is a self-proclaimed Man About Town, and with over 340,000 followers on Instagram he’s also the man to ask for tips on how he successfully parlayed his lifestyle into brand opportunities.

In Tuesday’s session “Custom Content: How Publishers and Instagrammers are Leading Campaigns for Brands” we heard from Melanie Altarescu, Head of Strategic Initiatives, WIRED and Patrick Janelle, Executive Director, Spring Street Social Society. Patrick outlined some of his best Instagram advice.

1. THINK OF INSTAGRAM AS A VISUAL DIARY

What’s your story? What’s the world that you’re sharing with followers? Janelle treats his feed as a journal, posting 2-3 times per day, always chronologically. He adds context to his photos – and further insight into his world – through always including captions, saying “Instagram is a personal platform, and it’s important to connect your photos to your story.”

2. DETERMINE 3 KEY ASPECTS OF YOUR LIFESTYLE TO FOCUS ON

For Janelle, it’s food, fashion and travel. He’s had success portraying those aspects for brands in those specific industries, as well as on broader campaigns for companies such as Capital One and Amex.

3. CREATE A CANVAS FOR OTHERS’ DREAMS

Janelle noted that one of the key reasons people follow him is to see the streets and cafes and restaurants around New York. He creates scenes that people can project themselves into, allowing his followers to imagine that it’s them taking New York by storm.

4. iPhone IMAGES NEED EDITING TOO

While Janelle uses his iPhone to take all his Instagram images, he doesn’t skip on the editing process. Images are run through at least one, and typically several, editing apps before being posted. Janelle’s top three recommendations are Snapseed for the selective adjust feature, VSCO Cam for its filters, and Afterlight for adjusting midtones and highlights.

Altarescu noted that, from the brand perspective, one of the key aspects of working with Instagrammers is receiving images they can use on other platforms. The brands leading the field, such as Park Hyatt and Victorinox, are tapping influencers and taking the content they create and crafting it into campaigns for their website, social media channels and even print initiatives.

Jenni Dawes is the Principal Consultant at COLLABORATEUR, a collective of creative and digital strategists based in New York City.

Custom Content: How Publishers And Instagrammers Are Leading Campaigns for Brands

Posted on by Nicole Brown

Publishers are no longer creating branded campaigns solely on their own and having it live only on their platform. It needs to live across all of the publishers social channels, the brands channels, and a new development: making the first outlet be the channel of the creators.

Working with notable Instagrammers, publishers are now retooling native ads and enabling brand storytelling to start on social. This enables new paths to authentically capture people’s attention via the broader media ecosystem, often before the campaign appears in print or online.

On Tuesday February 24, join Melanie Altarescu, head of strategic initiatives at WIRED, to lead this “social first” content discussion and unpack the ideation, pitching, and activations for these campaigns. Joining Melanie will be several instagram “agents” including Patrick Janelle, @aguynamedpatrick.

 
To learn more about this masterclass-style event and to get your pass, go here.

Playing 5 Questions with Sean Glass

Posted on by Sara Adam

Social Media Week is just behind us, so we caught up with the industry’s favorite entrepreneur, Sean Glass. Glass hosted the Official Closing Party for Social Media Week, with White Panda as the special performance on February 21st. Check out our brief Q&A as we get ready with Glass about advances in music technology and Social Media Week down below.

  1. How often do you use social media: number of tweets a day, number of likes on Instagram, etc?
    I’ll generally tweet a few times a day, maybe once regarding something I’m working on like a release or an event, and then I’ll talk about Ryan Gosling or something like that here and there. Instagram — once or twice a week I’ll post, generally peruse my friends once a day on average, like a few. Facebook, I mainly use as a messaging service; I don’t read other feeds much at all. But I make sure to post events and releases on there, as besides email, it is the most important marketing tool.
  2. How has social media changed your life?
    It’s not even worth noting specific instances at this point; it’s just a part of life. It’s like asking someone how the telephone changed their life. Everyone is connected, information travels instantly and disappears in seconds or minutes if you’re really engaging. We can be working and programmed nonstop. There is no off switch, no office hours, no vacations, or days off. I’m less interested in how it’s changed those of us who grew up without it than I am interested in what the work force will be like when kids who were raised on it grow up.
  3. What is the best way of utilizing social platforms leading up to and during an event?
    It’s weird to say this, because I hate getting emails, but email is still by far the most important marketing tool. If I tweet, I can count on my hand how many people will show up. If I create a Facebook event, engagement is probably about 5%, and that means it’s an interesting event. Recently, I sent out an email to 3000 people, and 1000 showed up.
  4. What are you currently interested in music technology? A specific app/service?
    Data. I’m interested in companies that are compiling data that we did not have before, and analyzing it to create more informed decisions than we are making in our current day to day. A lot of inefficiencies will be made redundant by data, which I am excited for, as the work will become more creative and focused on building interesting creative ideas and products rather than sifting through the noise.
  5. How do you want to see music technology grow this year?
    Less noise, more creative products. We do not need more “music discovery,” we need distinguishing factors for why an audience will notice my stuff rather than someone else’s.

Social Media Does, In Fact, Matter — To Every Kind Of Business

Posted on by Lane Blackmer

Let me be honest: I’m sick of seeing posts on LinkedIn looking for volunteers or interns to run social media. Furthermore, many of those that do offer pay, they are only suggesting a $30,000 salary.

The fact is this: those businesses misunderstand what social media is about — as do plenty of fresh-faced college graduates who think the job description consists of tweeting.

Social media managers and strategists don’t post on social media. They create, plan and execute marketing campaigns.

It’s all about social media strategy. Social media matters simply because of this fact — it’s new-age savvy marketing, not a just social tool.

2014: the year of salaried social media jobs

OK, so many businesses aren’t understanding the full importance of social media, but it’s at least important that businesses of every kind — non-profits, corporate and small businesses — recognize its potential. A staggering 88% of marketers would like to know the most effective social media uses.

Forbes declared last month that in 2014, investment in social media would be more than just a luxury — it will become necessary. A quick scan of social media-related postings on LinkedIn show that it’s true — many listings have the words “new position” embedded in there somewhere.

And there’s even data to back up that claim: Business Insider cited Constant Contact’s Small Businesses: Then and Now Survey saying that 87% of small businesses are using social media as a legitimate marketing tool.

The publication also predicted there’d be a vast expansion in these six social media-related jobs: SEO Specialist, Social Media Strategist, Online Community Manger, Social Media Marketing Manager, Social Media Marketing Coordinator, and Blogger or Social Media Copywriter.

This expansion makes sense. The Internet is accessible almost everywhere and folks are consuming more tidbits of information than ever.

People certainly take advantage of it.

According to Chelsea Krost, the average person has their smartphone with them 20 hours out of the entire day. And 80% of people reach for their smartphone when they wake up.

But why are so many skeptical to jump on the bandwagon?

Here’s the big question in social media for businesses: how do I measure the return on investment (ROI)?

That question isn’t easily answered — because there’s no way to be 100% sure you’re tracking the right data to prove this… or that you even can track the right data.

Every company is different. And sometimes it’s about trial and error to figure out which platform is most effective for your business. B2B companies seem to have a lot of success on LinkedIn; while B2C companies, depending on what they do and if they’re business or service oriented, can see great success on Twitter or Instagram.

Regardless, Social Media Examiner reported that some businesses actually have mastered tracking ROI. It seems like most of those businesses don’t have direct proof per se, but use of social media is the differing variable when the company started to see decreases in spending or increases in sales.

Either way, Social Media Examiner’s 2013 Report finds 89% of marketers surveyed claimed increased social media marketing increased exposure and site traffic.

Social media matters — and here’s why

When I talk about social media use I don’t mean quoting eccentric family members at Thanksgiving dinner on Twitter (though I’m guilty of this). I mean using it for marketing, branding, developing brand trust, hearing from individual customers, and doing damage control.

It’s pretty much a given that businesses, marketers, and even individuals (in a lot of fields, you market yourself) should care about these things.

A lot of businesses may not see an ROI on their social media, but the question should be this: why?

Sometimes it’s not about the use of social media as much as how it’s used. Social media can be used poorly or used well. Someone doing a company’s social media should be paid for their expertise — because social media is not just about posting on the platforms, it’s about posting content to the platforms.

According to HubSpot, companies that blog 15 times or more per month see an increase of five times the traffic on their site.

The other key to social media is persistence. Social Media Examiner’s 2013 Report also cited that companies using social media for three or more years said it helped by improving search rankings, creating more partnerships, generating ideas, increasing traffic, providing marketplace insight, and reducing marketing expenses — to name a few things.

Social media in use — effectively — isn’t just about posting. It’s about executing a strategy specifically tailored to a company — and it is proven to help marketing efforts.

So why aren’t you investing in social media?

Lane Blackmer is a self-employed former journalist. Although she’s no longer a newsie, Lane since discovered other uses for social media such as public relations, marketing, job searching and trying to win gift cards from her favorite local businesses through contests. Lane inhabits Philadelphia, where’s it’s not always sunny…but at least there’s cheese steaks. You can follow her on Twitter at @LaneBlackmer.

Image courtesy Social Media Examiner 2013 Report. Featured image courtesy Dan Meyers.

Surveying the Visual Social Media Landscape

Posted on by Linnea Zielinski

As you might have read on Mashable, this Getty stock photo was widely circulated through social media in the wake of hurricane Sandy and purported to be a shot of the storm approaching New York, an example of one problem discussed during Tuesday’s Social Media Week panel.

Tuesday’s “The Rise of Visual Social Media” panel, moderated by Rubina Madan Fillion (Social Media Editor, The Wall Street Journal), featuring Sean Mann (Social Media Editor, The Wall Street Journal), Sion Fullana (Freelance Photographer), Liz Eswein (Co-Founder, The Mobile Media Lab), and Brian DiFeo (Co-Founder, The Mobile Media Lab) honed in on various aspects of the current state of visual social media, remaining largely within the Instagram realm.

In the culture that procrastinates by staring at posts of aggregated pictures of everything from puppies to family portraits, complacency may characterize our relationship with visual social media. Images are simply captured, consumed, and cast aside across a multitude of social media platforms. We are a community of SnapChat-like consumers. Do you actually remember what your friend’s wedding dress looked like from the photos you looked through for 20 minutes on Facebook? Didn’t think so.

Most of the panelists of Tuesday’s talk at 92Y Tribeca seem, like most of us, to take an observational role in the landscape of visual social media. Rather than discuss where technology is taking us and the cultural implications of these changes, whether they manifest themselves in the way we communicate with each other, frame our understanding of the world, or maintain (or don’t) our culture in an increasingly globalized world, the discussion almost exclusively orbited Instagram, “photoshopped” images, and how to take a good mobile photo.

Questions of practical issues were also discussed among the panelists, such as what should be done about any entity that republishes an image without attribution or credit, a very real concern in today’s world of unlimited content. Mann attempted to push the discussion to a wider vantage point by patiently cutting to the center of each question with targeted observations and commentary. Glimpses of deeper conversation were seen, but not explored in depth.

Despite this, each panelist pulled from their varying professional experiences to weave together a lively discussion. Mann assured audience members that news agencies have checks and balances, namely jigsaw replication (piecing together a scene of an event by looking at images taken from various angles by different people present), in place to avoid printing or publishing fraudulent images, while Fullana urged caution, citing a prominent Spanish publication that paid 30,000 Euro for an adulterated photograph. DiFeo and Eswein, with their extensive knowledge of Instagram, weighed in on the omnipresence and ease of photo-altering apps. According to Eswein, the presence of filters on mobile phone cameras is “just an evolution of how filters have been enabled previously” and offers the ability to bring out nuances of a photo. DiFeo assured listeners that a photo filtered the wrong way would jump out at them.

One such moment occurred when the panelists discussed newcomer to the visual social media scene, Vine, a platform for creating six-second videos and what they see as the limitations of this new format. Fullana cites our decreasing attention spans as a major obstacle to Vine’s success in the news industry, claiming no one would invest six seconds in a video when they could instantaneously gauge their interest in a story from their reaction to a photo. Fullana’s claim seems akin to promoting a movie through posters rather than trailers and, therefore, rather shortsighted. The panel seemed to unanimously agree that Vine contextually doesn’t work for news coverage because Vine videos are planned and edited rather than shot in the moment. But what if Vine-like videos, produced through this app or another technology, could prove to be the movie trailers of feature news stories Couldn’t they be more attractive than a correspondent or anchor’s one sentence pitch?  I wish, instead, they had discussed what it means for modern-day reporting if a package of six seconds or 140 characters is seen as too much content.

Maybe no one knows what advancements in visual social media mean for an array of visual industries, but Social Media Week is the best time to contemplate that horizon. Conjecture may be all we have at this point, but that’s where the exciting ideas and innovations happen. If the talk had dabbled more in the unknown, everyone’s passion for visual social media would have been more fulfilled.

Linnea Zielinski is a freelance project assistant and intern at Serious Eats and a grad student studying publishing at NYU SCPS.

Top image courtesy of istwitterwrong
“Rise of visual social media explained in a pic of the audience – almost all on their mobile phones #smwvisual” Photo and Tweet by Sean Mann (@fieldproducer)