Banyan Branch

More than half of customer loyalty programs have a social media or mobile component currently in place or in development, according to research recently conducted by Banyan Branch and VIPdesk.

Other key findings include:

• 27% of customer loyalty program members prefer to utilize a mobile device to access program features.
• 32% of customer loyalty programs reward members with points or other currency for participating in social media and/or online discussions about their brand.
• While only 17% of customer loyalty programs offer members a mobile application to use when redeeming rewards, another 30% have a mobile app currently in development: meaning that 47% of loyalty programs have a mobile app either in place now or will soon.

This survey was conducted during a recent webinar presented by Banyan Branch and VIPdesk called “Engaging and Retaining Customers through Social Media and Mobile-Enabled Loyalty Programs”. The webinar reviewed how brands can strategically incorporate social media and mobile applications into their loyalty programs in a manner that resonates with their customers and gets results.

“When properly motivated and encouraged, brands’ most loyal customers can become their most active advocates,” says Dave Hanley, co-founder and principal at Banyan Branch. “This path of integrating social media with loyalty programs and rewards will ultimately allow brands to grow their online conversation and provide deep and interesting content created by those who know them best.”

Adds Mark Robeson, senior vice president of sales and marketing at VIPdesk: “These research findings are proof positive that the advent and growth of mobile communication and social media is significantly influencing the way consumers interact with the brands with which they do business.”

Listen to the recording of “Engaging and Retaining Customers through Social Media and Mobile-Enabled Loyalty Programs” featuring Banyan Branch co-founder Dave Hanley.

While marketers might focus their time and spend on Facebook, Twitter and other major social sites, there’s still something to be said about LinkedIn. Though maybe not as press-worthy, LinkedIn has persevered as the social network for business professionals. Many who spend time on LinkedIn do not generally spend much time on other social networks, and are definitely there strictly for business purposes.

With over 119 million users and counting, plus recent upgrades to brand resources, LinkedIn is a potential gold mine for target marketing as well as recruiting.

Let’s take a look at the various resources now available to brands on LinkedIn.

Your official company page

This might be a no-brainer, but in case you haven’t logged on to LinkedIn since before summer 2011, take the time to create and fill out your brand’s official company page. Make sure all of the info, from your company’s description, employees and links to other properties are correct. Put some time and care in filling out your product offerings, and select the keywords you want to associate with your products & services (this will be helpful not just for potential employees, but vendors, clients and SEO purposes as well.)

Ads

Just like with Facebook ads and sponsored stories or Twitter’s sponsored tweets and hashtags, LinkedIn’s beefed up its brand offerings by allowing self-serve advertising. Taking your all-time CTR and bids, LinkedIn creates a quality score for your apps similar to Google AdWords. You can target, split test and adjust your LinkedIn ads just as you would with other online ad buys, and your minimum daily spend is only $10.

Linked apps

If your brand makes use of Google Docs, blogging, SlideShare, online portfolios and more, you should definitely connect LinkedIn Apps to your company profile. This is an easy way to integrate things you’re already doing as a brand with your company page. Those who follow your brand on LinkedIn can see your latest blog posts, speaking presentations, webinars and more.

Twitter

Another small but impactful tip: if you’re making most of your updates over on Twitter, connect it with your company page on LinkedIn so your LI followers will see the latest too.

Answers

LinkedIn Answers, like Quora, is a way for your business to get answers from the public as well as a way to share knowledge and expertise on various topics.

Groups

The oldest and most popular feature on LinkedIn, Groups are an easy way to engage in discussions with consumers, bloggers and other professionals who have interests in product and service categories that matter to you. If getting involved in forums is useful but difficult to work into your schedule, use LinkedIn groups to find out what people are saying about topics your brand is interested in.

Events

Use your online activity to expand your networking offline too. LinkedIn Events are a good way to find industry events, meet potential partners or clients, and promote your brand’s upcoming events or sponsorships.

Just like you’re doing with Facebook, Twitter and the like, make sure you are making it easy for your LinkedIn audience to understand your brand’s offerings, read about your latest news and communicate with your brand.vWhether it’s for making your next great hire, improving your SEO or expanding your lead generation opportunities, LinkedIn is no doubt a valuable resource.

Have any questions on using LinkedIn for business? Email us at info@banyanbranch.com!

Follow Banyan Branch on LinkedIn.

Resources: SocialFresh & LinkedIn

Written by Andrea Hofer, senior account executive

Pinterest has been dominating tech and social media news as of late, arguably making it the breakout “next social media thing” of the new year. For those who aren’t familiar, Pinterest is a way to create moodboards of ideas, items you love, and things that inspire you. It’s also one of the fastest growing social properties for brands and consumers alike on the internet. Pinterest lets you engage with design-minded consumers, run Pinterest campaigns, and generate site traffic.

How to use it:

Pinterest “Pin it to Win it” contests generally utilize Facebook to share the rules and winners, and in some cases contestants need to submit a link to their pinboard on Facebook for consideration. Pinboard entries should include hashtags and/or @mentions of the brand to ensure virality. Winners tend to be chosen either by the contest sponsor or by popularity, i.e. how many likes, comments, and repins it gets. Influential winners can be added to a shared pinboard – a highly valued prize.

Some great brands and campaigns on Pinterest include:

Real Simple - Pinterest drives more traffic than Facebook for Real Simple. Real Simple plans to integrate Pinterest more deeply into RealSimple.com, starting with ‘Pin it’ buttons on the website, which make it easier for fans to pin product images. Any image pinned from a site links directly back, a potential source of revenue.

Nordstrom - Nordstrom uses Pinterest to see what trends and styles the community likes based on engagement  – likes, comments, and repins.

Seahawks  -The Seahawks’ Pinterest contest requires users to start a Seahawks themed pinboard for a chance at winning 12 prizes. Contestents’ pin boards must include their tagged #favoriteseahawk, #FavoriteSeahawksPhoto, and #musthavegamedaygear. The rules and prizing were managed through a Facebook tab.

Lands’ End – In their “Pin It to Win It” Pinterest contest, ten fashionistas won $250 gift cards to Lands’ End Canvas by creating pinboards re-pinning their favorite Lands’ End Canvas products from Lands’ End pinboards.

High Point Market – High Point Market recruited home fashion trendsetters to capture images of their favorite finds as they walk the High Point Market, listing the exhibitor name and showroom number with the photo. The trendsetters also present the exhibitor with a sign that highlights the Style Spotter’s name and a QR code and URL for the Pinterest board. Everyone can vote or comment on their favorite pinboards and the most popular pinboard wins that Style Spotter a free trip to the next High Point Market.

Gilt Home - Gilt Home uses Pinterest to introduce their audience to in-house industry experts, promote contests and events, and share pinboards with design influencers on creative ways to decorate your home, which allows cross pollination of readership. (client)

Other great Pinterest boards to check out: Klout, Cabot Cheese, Bergdorf Goodman, Whole Foods,Williams-Sonoma, BHLDN, Feterie, Etsy, VandM, Rue, Lonny, and Nina Garcia.

Yesterday, Twitter revealed its first major redesign for its web and mobile interface in over a year. Twitter’s redesign comes on the heels of Facebook’s Timeline launch and other major changes, and Google+’s Branded Pages announcement. While the New New Twitter is a change for everyone, how will it affect the way brands market themselves on the micromessaging social network?

Before we launch into Twitter’s new Brand Pages, let’s briefly go over the major changes that all users see on their profile:

Me

The overall profile size seems to be a bit smaller than last year’s redesign. Users’ main info, including: profile image, bio, link, follower, following and tweet counts and profile edit button now live on a static horizontal bar that sits atop the stream of your latest tweets and the sidebar (which is moved to the right and includes: lists, recent images, trending topics and Twitter’s sitemap.)

Homepage

The new homepage draws more attention to trending topics, follow suggestions and the stream of tweets from users you follow. Very similar to the “Me” page, but without the profile box on top.

Connect

Twitter’s roped in “Mentions” with “Interactions” (retweets, favorited tweets and new follows) and housed them under the Connect tab. Use this to see who’s been interacting with you.

Discover

Hashtags, Twitter’s main way to track major events, trending topics and other search keywords, is now part of the Discover tab. Twitter Stories are the main focus in this tab’s interface, along with local trending topics.

Brand Pages

So what can marketers look forward to with the new Twitter design? According to Twitter’s Advertising blog, Brand Pages will have two major features:

Larger header image for displaying your logo, tagline, and any other visuals.

The Promoted Tweet: You can also control the message visitors see when they first come to your profile page by promoting a Tweet to the top of your page’s timeline. This Tweet helps you highlight your most engaging and important content and better connect with your target audience. The Promoted Tweet on your profile page will appear auto-expanded so that visitors to your page can instantly see the photo or video content that you link to from your Tweet.

You can see below how Nike and Best Buy, two of the first brands to receive a Brand Page, are using the new features to promote current campaigns and holiday promotions:

These changes, along with Promoted Tweets, Accounts, and Trending Topics, will allow for much better brand visibility within the Twitter interface. Marketers will have more opportunity to highlight major campaigns and initiatives, and control over what their followers see and when.

Click here for our updated guide on creating your background for the New New Twitter.

The second most-visited site in the world got a much-needed makeover! YouTube boasted a brand-new look today, complete with a new homepage and simpler navigation to your favorite video channels. What’s new on YouTube? Here’s a quick rundown of the changes in its makeover:

Overall site design redux

The new YouTube homepage boasts a simple look that looks a lot like how Twitter and Google+ are structured now, with one sidebar and a main content stream. YouTube’s made it much easier to sign in on the left navigation sidebar, which also features links to your Channel subscriptions.

Channels

A few weeks ago, YouTube announced Channels, enhanced brand experiences that make marketing and advertising much more worthwhile. The new interface integrates these Channels to benefit both users and brands. Users can organize their favorite channel subscriptions straight from the homepage and find new ones by category, while brands have various templates to choose from in building out their Channel to their needs.

Facebook & Google+ Integration

Social media is all about an integrated experience right? We’ve been able to share YouTube videos on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and now Google+. Slowly but surely, YouTube is folding these sites within the YouTube.com experience. Now, you can see what videos your Facebook and Google+ friends have posted right from your homepage sidebar navigation. It’s only a matter of time before Twitter and other sites are incorporated as well.

What’s a YouTube redesign without an instructional video? Check out all the changes here:

Written with Kelsey Frause, account manager

Google+ launched this summer to considerable excitement. As with most Google products, the invite-only exclusivity only added to the initial hype. Today, brands and organizations are also getting in on the platform with the launch of Google+ Branded Pages.

We profiled Google+’s main features when it premiered this summer. Let’s take a look at new and updated features of the quickly-evolving platform, including a couple of examples from brands who currently have Branded Pages:

Hangouts

While friends might use Hangouts for a private conversation, businesses have been using them as an alternative to conference calls (complete with the ability to share screen views). Moving forward, marketers should target the ability to broadcast and record these sessions for live interviews, Q&A sessions or educational webcasts. That means that while 9 lucky fans might get to partake in a live Q&A with a brand’s spokesperson, anyone can watch the live broadcast.  This will open up an entirely new, truly live, virtual experience for a brand’s loyalist followers.  See how Macy*s and Anderson Cooper are already gearing up for live chats in Hangouts.

What’s Hot

What’s Hot is a new addition that allows users to get a preview of the most shared posts. Whereas Facebook has developed complex reasoning behind what content gets pushed into your feed, Google+ has a specific “What’s Hot” post, which allows the user to scroll through a horizontal ticker (instead of taking up all that pesky vertical space) to find out what’s spreading across Google+.

Ripples 

Klout scores, shares, re-Tweets. Marketers are always searching for the right metrics to prove the success of a campaign. Ripples is a real time diagram that shows how a post spreads through individual users (and their circles) as it makes its way around the platform. The visuals are not only informative, but sure to spice up many a PowerPoint deck.

Direct Connect

Google+ has worked to better integrate Google Search and YouTube into its platform. With Branded Pages, it is rolling out its Direct Connect feature, which allows you to search for Google+ Pages within your normal Google search. For example, if you’re looking for Banyan Branch, simply add a “+” before our name to get to our Google+ Branded Page.

For brands and consumers alike, it’s important to view Google+ apart from its contemporaries. Think of Google+ as a new platform for sharing information, much like a premium forum service. We need to change our mindset from “Google+ versus Facebook” to “how can we leverage these new tools.”

While Hangouts seem to be the standout feature for Google+ first wave of Branded Pages, it will be important for brands to incorporate What’s Hot and especially Ripples in measuring and tweaking their Google+ strategy.

For the latest on Google+ changes, take a look at Google’s “What’s New on Google+?” page, or keep an eye on the Banyan Branch blog.

At Facebook’s annual developer conference yesterday, F8, CEO Mark Zuckerberg & team announced radical changes to how we see, use and interact in the social network. Over the next few weeks, users can expect to see a completely new profile interface as well as better integration with other things they read, watch, and listen to on the internet.

So what’s the hype? In sum, Facebook wants us to be able to tell our individual stories in a way we’ve never had before. But what will you see when Facebook rolls out their new features? In a quick snapshot, we’ll show you the three major elements of your new profile:

A new profile picture, Cover

One of the major elements of Facebook is the ability to share photos with your friends quickly and easily. Now, the first thing people will see when they visit your profile is a Cover. Just like sharing any other photo, you can upload a new image or choose one from your albums. Choose your cover wisely – it takes up most of the top of your profile, and at this point it isn’t resizable. Keep in mind, you’ve still got a profile picture – it just looks more like a badge now. Take a look at our art director Byron Gronseth‘s Cover:

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Written by Karianne Stinson

You’ve probably heard about Klout. Maybe you’ve seen people sharing their Klout score. Or perhaps you know someone who’s received a Klout perk. It could be that you’ve heard people talking about what topics they are influential about, according to Klout. You might be wondering what Klout is all about, and why you should care. Let me give you the highlights.

Klout is a company that runs social media analytics to measure a person’s or brand’s influence within their social network. The site collects data from various social sites to measure content and interaction. A user can link their Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, YouTube, Tumblr, Flickr, Instagram, Blogger, WordPress, LastFM and now, Google+ accounts to their Klout profile. Based on Klout’s algorithm, users earn a score from 1 to 100 that represents how engaged and influential they are within their social network.

Reasons for the hype:

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