Digital CPG Blog

It’s been awhile since we featured an infographic. Here’s one on social media based on AdAge data:

• Auto-posting to Facebook decreases likes and comments by 70%
• B2C Facebook results go up by 30% on Sundays
• 34% of marketers have generated leads using Twitter and 20% have closed deals using Twitter
• 55% of people access Twitter via their mobiles
• 40% of bloggers consider themselves professionals
• 56% of college students said that if they were offered a job by a company that banned social media use, they’d turn it down

From start-up entrepreneur and marketer Neil Patel, here are our favorite lessons from Fortune 500 companies about blogging:

Lesson #1: Let Your Audience Think for You

1. Ask for ideas in a blog post – you write a post where you share an idea you think you’d like to pursue [Think Starbucks and their crowdsourced blogs]. You then ask your readers to tell you what they think. You could also use this tactic to ask your readers what they would like to get as content from you in the coming year. 2012 is just around the corner…so why not give this idea a shot?
2. Create a separate platform for idea creation – My Starbucks Idea is really a huge forum that is open to the public. You can read any posts you want, but you have to be a member to comment and add posts. Forums for private members is really a great way to up the engagement of your audience. However, make sure you test this idea. I did and found that it didn’t work out too well. But you never know… it may work for you.

Lesson #2: Niche Blogs to Build Brand Awareness

When you think about General Electric (GE), what immediately comes to mind? If you are like most people you probably said “light bulbs.”

But GE is so much more than that. That’s why they launched a line of blogs to break the public view that all they do is light bulbs.

Here is what they offer:

• Txchnologist – this online magazine is about all things technology. From how climate has affected the way baseballs are made to self-healing electronics. Pretty much things that GE has its hand in.
• Data Visualization – GE takes all the really complicated yet useful data behind science and technology and creates easy-to-understand infographics.
• Ecomagination – this is the blog for the environmentally-minded GE customer, demonstrating their concern for the environment and how they are tackling the latest issues.
• GE Reports – great daily, detailed stories and reports on issues like the Top Five Technology Challenges Tackled by GE in 2011 and The Unsung Hero of the Maternity Ward Helps Deliver Baby No. 35 Million
• Healthymagination – this blog is dedicated to showing how GE is helping people live longer and healthier lives, for example, by providing top-notch cancer treatment and AIDS/HIV cures.
• The GE Show – this series of videos deals with topics like the future of flight and airplanes, railroads and solar energy, industries that GE creates products for.

Lesson #3: Never abandon your blog for Facebook

• You can’t fully brand your Fan Page experience –you can customize certain aspects about your Fan Page, but you won’t have control over such things as color, logos and messages.
• Facebook notes suck compared to blog posts – there is no comparison between the two. Besides, Facebook Notes hardly get read, right?
• They own the content – of course you could download the content if you wanted to, but why go through the hassle when you can publish the content on your site?
• Lack of SEO – inside Facebook it’s tough to control meta tags connected to photos, videos, updates and notes. On the other hand, you can easily optimize your blog. SEO on your blog will help you control your content’s ranking, bringing you greater visibility unlike Facebook.

Facebook is great for deepening your engagement with your readers, but it should never replace blogging. Ever!

Read more here. Blogging is still one of the most powerful corporate communication tools in my opinion. Other platforms will evolve, but blogging will continue to evolve as well.

Spice company McCormick introduced two social media applications on Facebook in December in order to inject itself into as many online conversations as possible. The Merry Merry Menu Planner lets users post menus that friends and family can comment and vote on; the Big Cookie Share provides tools for creating custom digital cookies, which can be sent to Facebook friends with messages.

“At a time when laptops and tablets rival spatulas as the most-used kitchen tool,” the company says in its release, “we are offering our fans new ways to share the holiday spirit and create memorable taste experiences — whether they’re putting the holiday menu up for a vote or frosting Facebook cookies for faraway family members.”

I like both of these applications, and would love to see what the results of their campaign. It looks like in December they had 9100 fans (see screenshot above), but if you visit their Facebook page now, they have nearly 280,000! Quite the increase if most of it came from their new initiatives.

Talent.

Finding staff with suitable digital skills topped the list in a recent survey by E-Consultancy.

We asked participants in the survey about the specific skill areas that they perceived to be the most difficult to recruit for.

Web analytics and data topped the list, followed by social media, and content marketing, indicating that there is already a potential skills shortage in these areas.

When respondents were asked which digital marketing disciplines they anticipated would be the key areas of growth in the coming year, the top answers were social media, content marketing, and web analytics and data.

The fact that those areas of predicted growth in resourcing were the same as those that are already listed as being the most difficult to recruit for means one thing: a looming talent time bomb.

In May this year McKinsey released a report (Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition, and Productivity) that brought sharp focus to this talent crisis in one key area: data.

The exponential growth in data it said,  driven by a growth in data-rich and real-time environments such as social and mobile, embedded internet (the so-called ‘internet of things’) and the increasing focus on analytics and owned media, will mean that the capability of analysing large data sets will become “a key basis of competition, underpinning new waves of productivity growth, innovation, and consumer surplus”.

…

Not far further down the list of areas that are challenging for companies to recruit for came web design and build. This was also notable in being identified as the most challenging area in which to retain staff.

And this doesn’t look like a problem that is going away anytime soon. A campaign to boost the teaching of computer skills and coding is gathering momentum, supported by large technology companies including Google and Microsoft.

What is your company doing to retain top talent in the digital space?

We talked about UGC (user generated content) earlier this week… so just how powerful is it?

Well, the potential for content monetization on UGC is stupendous. Starting with revenue estimates, Twitter made $45 million, followed by LinkedIn at $243 million, MySpace at $288 million and YouTube made $945 million in 2010. If you are wondering why Facebook was left out, well, it is because the figures for Facebook need their own line! Ladies and gentlemen, we learn from Facebook who made a whopping $1.860 BILLION in 2010.

All this makes one wonder if users should own their content. Where would social media sites stand then, if they can’t monetize on UGC?

via.

Have you tried consumer-generated media (CGM) or user-generated content (UGC)? Does it provide value?

Major consumer product brands think they do, and among them is Procter & Gamble who is putting so much stock in the word-of-mouth approach that it’s relying on it to promote a new mouth-themed campaign.

The “Life Opens Up” Project – and related “Life opens up when you do” tag line – launched in recent weeks with the objective of creating a correlation between maintaining a healthy mouth and “living life to the fullest.” Developed to promote P&G’s Crest and Oral-B brands, the campaign revolves around a contest that invites consumers to share their stories of how “a healthy mouth has played a role in opening up to life and the world.” To participate, consumers must submit a two-minute video of themselves describing their experience to LifeOpensUpProject.com. They can view and vote on the user submissions – including one made by spokesperson and host of NBC’s “The Biggest Loser” Alison Sweeney – on the P&G campaign microsite, as well as on the Crest, Crest Whitestrips, and Oral-B Facebook pages.

A CGM contest and CGM marketing content are a natural fit, but more than that, P&G’s digital marketing strategy demonstrates an understanding of the web 2.0 media that’s so effectively connecting consumers with brands. With this campaign, the advertiser does a number of things right: it leverages authenticity while maintaining relevance, employs social media to promote the contest, and rewards consumers for their participation, and eschews traditional digital advertising for more personal messaging (while the Glam Media buy does include rich media ad units, it’s the personal stories from bloggers that represent the bulk of the campaign).

“Procter & Gamble Co. is adding to its custom-content lineup with sole sponsorship of DailyBuzz Style by beauty brands Olay, Pantene and CoverGirl, with content provided and curated by Federated Media Publishing,” reports Jack Neff. Here are the details:

DailyBuzz Style, launched Aug. 1, highlights the P&G beauty brands and integrates “editorially relevant posts into the content of the site,” said Federated spokesman Clint Bagley in an email. That’s similar to what Federated’s DailyBuzz Moms site has done since its launch in May with backing from Clorox Co.

The site will feature content from such Federated Media blogs as Fashionista.com, HonestlyWTF.com, YouLookFab.com, MakeupandBeautyBlog.com and Basenotes.net. It will also include Federated Media’s editor-curated list of “Top Nine” interactive posts, which discuss such topics as warm-weather wear and drugstore beauty buys and are organized into categories on fashion, beauty and home decor.