Oscar Buzz

As we all know from reading Twitter and Facebook feeds last night, the Oscars were being aired on ABC. I am not particularly interested in watching prolonged TV award shows to hand out a couple trophies, but I thought it was interested how ABC and the Oscars tried to capitalize on streaming of the show. It was discussed in an article on TechCrunch.com by Sarah Perez entitled ABC's Handling of Oscars' Online & Mobile Streaming May Set Precedent for Future "Event TV" Airings. 

The Oscars were able to sell out of their ad inventory for almost $2 million dollars per advertisement; however, the interesting part is that the Oscars became available on many online sources at 6 AM this morning. In addition, the streaming contains 15 and 30 second advertisements throughout. In addition, it was not able to be streamed live, but attempted to appease the online audience with video highlights during the airing at Oscar.com . This shows how many marketers are experimenting with how to captivate audiences without cannibalizing either market. It definitely shows how the future could influence marketing of major events on the television and online.

Personally, the Oscars experiment to see how to capture the online audience and the television audience is interesting. They understand that during this day and age many more people are using the internet, but want to stick to the tradition of airing a television event similar to the Superbowl. This idea to stream the following day helps to create more advertising funding; however, it will have to be assessed which way is the most effective. In the long run, I think shows will deviate more towards the internet because of changes in culture and how age groups function. As a result, I think the target audience during award shows would be families and middle aged men and women. As generations progress, I think the internet will be a better distribution channel of information based on the lifestyle’s that my generation has become accustomed too. I can see why ABC and the Oscars would be interested in testing how audiences react. I look forward to reading about future development or trials. 

@Twitter #JudgeMe

This week, I came upon an interesting article on Mashable called Twitter Will Decide the Value of Your Tweet by Sam Laird. The article illustrates how Twitter is changing its API to decide the value of personal tweets. Twitter is hoping to introduce this value system soon as tweets will be deems of low, medium, and eventually high value. They are hoping to improve the engagement of individuals that have high follower counts. This is very similar to the trending section on Twitter; however, they are hoping to eliminate and improve one’s Twitter experience.

In regards to this article, I think Twitter is definitely trying to improve the quality of the tweets that I could stumble upon. I think the company is striving to provide the users with a more satisfactory experience and invoke my interaction. It only makes sense right? On the other hand, I am not really sure that this new coding structure will actually help siphon out a substantial amount of the unwanted content. This definitely might be the case when companies can pay to have their tweets valued as “high”. This problem might perpetuate causing unhappy users to seek a new social media outlet. Overall, I like where Twitter’s head is to make the experience for end users better, but I am not entirely sure this is the best way of going about it. 

SnapChat Revolution

This week, I thought it would be appropriate to write a topic close to my phone. … SnapChat. This weekend, I was able to convert 3 of my friends to users of the popular application. It gives you the ability to send pictures to friends and limit the amount of time they can see it with a 10 second maximum. Also, the application allows you to add captions and draw on the pictures with limited colors. Essentially, it allows for a bit of humor while sending goofy faces or awkward pictures that you don’t want people to receive via SMS; however, it can be screenshot... BEWARE!

The article I ran across on TechCrunch by Semil Shah discusses how SnapChat is a widely growing application that many had misconceptions about.  The founders were unlike most startups and actually graduated college (for the most part). The application proved that it could become popular without Twitter or Facebook, but it reached the consumers directly on their most used product, smartphone. Although it is based on pictures, Snapchat is definitely different from Instagram or Pinterest.  I am interested to see how the idea continues to launch.

Recently, they have even allowed for the sharing of videos. I think this adds a new facet to the game.  Thankfully, these are deleted after viewing or it would be social suicide. It should be quite interesting to see if there is SnapChat revolution or if it is just another fad. For the time being, I know that many of my friends think it is fun and it has spread like wildfire, so we are going to enjoy it until a new app comes along to steal their thunder.

 Best of luck SnapChat.

Show Me the Way

In an article i read this week entitled turning social media follows into content marketing lead, i was able to understand and see how many people view the unpredictable nature of social media. The article by Jonathan Crossfield draws  an interesting parallel between social media leads and DJs attracting prospective audiences to bars.

Throughout the article, Crossfield discusses how people focus too much on pointless information such as return on investment; however, the real problem lies in lead acquisition. The need to try get results because a simple "like" may only take a few seconds. Companies need to keep in mind the effort put into social media marketing directly corresponds to the results. This can be understood in his analogy of DJs attracting people to bars. 

DJs may play a gig at a certain venue, but it is not their job to sell drinks. They are solely bringing in people that might be converted with drink specials. Although, if the bar and dance floor were located in different buildings then there would need to be a definite, clear path between the two to ensure drink sales. As a result, companies need to have a strategy that allows the followers to be motivated along each interactive step. This would allow numbers to become more relevant as you can understand each person's journey and where followers are lost. 

I think this article definitely hinges on the focus that strategies are so crucial to achieve goals. Also, i definitely agree that hard work pays off. A prospective customer, follower, or fan can tell when a company wants to interact with them. Hitting like on facebook doesn't necessarily mean that you are doing well. You need to get me to subscribe to a newsletter or read news about your company. Keep them on my mind so i spread the word to my friends. Social media has so much potential and companies need to capitalize on it while they can. Who knows what is right around the corner?