Just as the shoemaker’s child goes barefoot, marketing agencies sometimes forget to employ the same customer experience tactics for themselves that they do for their clients. That is, they get so wrapped up in the work that they forget to build the relationship. Then, at the end of the project or contract, while the client may walk away happy – he or she may also walk away forever.

That’s because the work is not enough.

Clients expect you to do good work when they hire you. Unfortunately, they may think anyone they hire can do the same caliber of work, so it doesn’t really matter whom they choose.

That’s why you have to make yourself the obvious choice, every time and all the time.

Often, it boils down to adherence to the Four Cs: Communication, Collaboration, Creativity and Commitment. And, while it may seem simple, their navigation actually is about as easy as a tightrope walk.

Communication is more than just keeping in touch. It is an ongoing process of give and take, but giving and taking in a way that is non-disruptive for both your organization and the client. That’s why a front-loaded system works best; that is, a strategic look at what already is being said and the goals of, and agreement on, new messaging. This reduces the need for meetings and constant wheel re-invention, enabling all to spend their time more productively and in a less stressful way. How does this create a strong relationship? With this approach, you become the archivist – the person/group that already has the informational foundation from which to launch more, and new, campaigns.

Collaboration, while easy to define, is definitely not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Some clients are more hands-on; others are more than happy to let you take the wheel. It all comes down to each client’s specific rhythms and comfort zones. It also ties in with what some call a concierge strategy, which focuses on providing exemplary service, advice and guidance to meet a wide variety of immediate needs. In marketing, however, it also involves taking the time to listen and understand the client’s long-term goals, marrying that with any episodic requests or one-off projects in order to promote a cohesive marketing effort. The best collaborations fall into the middle of the extremes, based on the mutual trust and respect that form the foundation for productive interactions.

Creativity, of course, is key – but not just for creativity’s sake. It is a sad fact that some agencies can get so caught up in the dazzle that they forget the message. The point is to make the client stand out in its market and industry, but in a good way and a way that builds and maintains momentum. We all have commercials we love but we couldn’t name the sponsor if our lives depended upon it. That’s why it is so important to help clients develop creative strategies that align with their business goals and generate a sustainable conversation about their brands.

Commitment, on the other hand, is one area in which it’s all right to be a little self-centered, nurturing a passion to do your best work at all times and pride that will allow you to do no less. This may sound like a no-brainer and it is – in the most literal way.

That’s because true commitment is a product of the heart, truly caring about the client’s future and being proud to do your part.

Like any strong relationship, the creation of an exceptional client experience builds up over time and requires concerted effort. And, as in any relationship worth pursuing, it requires regular tune-ups to keep it strong and never taking the connection for granted. In marketing, that means assuring the client stays on course but not on automatic pilot, engendering the confidence and loyalty that keeps the bond strong.

Wednesday, January 18, 2017 – Today, I was honored to speak before the Florida Public Relations Association on the topic of “Building and Sustaining a Thought Leadership Platform.”

While creating the presentation, I remembered a conversation with one of our international clients, who said that, in Europe, “knowledge leader” was the preferred term. The more I thought about it, the more I tended to understand. After all, anyone can have a thought or make you think; not everyone can convey valuable knowledge.
So who or what is a “knowledge leader”? Simply put, that person or organization is the go-to for information in their field of expertise. They are people and companies others trust to be credible, have vision and – most importantly – provide answers to their questions or solutions to problems.
Online, these sources are our bookmarks, our favorites, the ones that take just a few letters in our URL bar. They’re places we go for technical advice, enlightening information, industry updates or surefire recipes. They’re the places we go with confidence of good results.
Before you can position yourself or your organization as a knowledge leader, however, you have to know you’re attempting to lead. Like all things PR, it starts with the audience, understanding their businesses, their values and needs and what will resonate with them. Thought leadership, however, also requires introspection, that is, knowing your own organization and the knowledge equity you most likely already have amassed.
Ultimately, thought leadership is a form of content marketing in which you tap into the talent, experience and passion inside your organization to answer the biggest questions on the minds of your target audience on a particular topic or in a particular area. The goal is to systematically and consistently provide content that is:
  • Useful and engaging
  • Sustainable, current and curated
  • Authentic, concise and fact-based
  • Appropriate for your audience(s)
And don’t be afraid to take risks, whether it’s with infusions of humor or a unique view of the future. Those are the kind of things that come up in normal conversations and should come up here.
As I told my audience at the presentation, this may be a lot easier than they think, as they – no matter where they are in their careers – and their organizations – no matter the stage of their evolution – already have a wealth of experience, passion and knowledge that probably isn’t being promoted to its full potential.
Understanding those resources is the first step in building a thought leadership platform. The next step is determining your core messaging. Opinions may vary but core facts do not. When creating such a platform for our clients, we take a hard look at what they’re saying about themselves, what others are saying about them and what competitors say in comparison. Then we establish a common language, with the proof points, to help guide us and our clients going forward. A critical part of this is getting your current communications up to date with who you are now. It continues to amaze how many organizations have outgrown their messaging or are delivering conflicting information in different media. This creates the most substantial roadblock to a thought leadership content management strategy.
Once you know whom you’re talking to and what you want to tell them, you can tap into that deep well of expertise to build an arsenal of thought leadership assets and choose the right medium for its distribution, aiming at the heart of clients’ and prospects’ share of mind. And, remember, as communications visionary Marshall McLuhan said a half century ago, “the medium is the message.” That is, the form of a message has influence on the ways in which that message will be perceived. Decades later, it has never been more true, as there are now so many outlets and likely no one uses them all.
However, whatever the medium, emails to white papers, eBooks to video, checklists to FAQs, you want to be your target audience’s source of knowledge whenever they think about . . . you fill in the blank.
Among key tactics in creating thought leadership that drives results are:
  • Identify topics that align with your brand
  • Identify the questions customers and prospects are asking and answer them in multiple formats
  • Create value in the process
  • Provide the type of information a reader will want to pass on or comment about to others.
Is it worth all the work? Absolutely. A strong thought/knowledge leadership program creates an affinity for your brand, enables your content to start a conversation early in the consumer journey and develops a higher level of intimacy with your audience.
There are, of course, many ways to measure the success of your content management program, such as online metrics, open and response rates, page hits, etc. It is also important, however, to take note of both formal and informal conversations about your brand – listening to, learning from and taking the pulse of, your clients and prospects.
Before leaders set out to promote their images and their companies’ messages, they need to control the original content around their brands. By focusing on thought leadership, you can surround yourself and your audience with the right kind of content – content that’s valuable, educational and engaging. As thought leadership continues to grow in popularity (and as the base of successful public relations strategies), agencies will need to adjust their budgets to allow for greater thought leadership development and execution.

Whether you are planning a small business meeting, dinner reception, a large-scale tradeshow presence or any other type of internal or external corporate event, there are important factors to consider. Whatever the event, however, the overall goal remains the same: developing and enhancing relationships. To help you achieve that goal, here are 10 best practices to guide you in creating corporate events that shine the best light on your organization and make others’ participation worthwhile.

1. Communications Strategy: Have a solid strategy for the event, with a clear view of what you hope to achieve. Make sure your message is clear. Tell invitees what they can expect at the meeting, who will be presenting and what they stand to gain. Tell them how they will benefit, that is, will it help them solve a problem, enhance their knowledge or skill set, access key leaders in the field or simply enjoy themselves? Plan your communication campaign well in advance, giving attendees plenty of time to learn about it and meet registration or RSVP deadlines. If you have a hotel room block secured, work backward from cut-off dates to build interest and fill rooms. Know your audience and the types of communication to which they most likely will respond. From on-line hype videos to old-school direct mail, put together an arsenal that will work for that audience and your event. And don’t forget about your post-event communications to further grow those relationships.

2. Vendors: Lock in third-party vendor contracts early in the process. You don’t want any question as to their commitment to your event. This includes the hotel room block, speakers (and their travel/ hotel accommodations), catering service, banquet space or restaurants, meeting space, transportation service, audiovisual equipment team, bartenders and whatever else it will take.

3. Content: Make your event count with fresh content. It’s important not to take your attendees out of their offices for events with the same information year after year. Ensure the material is new and relevant to their needs. Are there any new systems, products or strategies your attendees need to know about? Are there industry trailblazers from outside your organization who can offer new insights and inspire attendance? For external events, everyone from your company should be well versed on your core messages to assure that attendees walk away with a clear vision of your brand. Your brand strategy should be integral with the event, consistent in messaging from beginning to end.

4. Event Strategy: Organize the information. It really helps to have a dedicated employee to coordinate all logistics in one place. Having too many cooks in the kitchen can cause confusion. This person keeps track of guest arrival and departure times, travel information, hotel rooms, special requests, contact information, intel about each guest, meal choices, special needs or dietary restrictions, emergency contact information and any other important information. Once on site, make sure all staff helping with events has this detailed information readily available. Having all of this information in an organized binder with the manifest, extra copies of agenda (and having more than one copy of this entire binder) is extremely beneficial during the event, especially if it is large enough to require multiple staff members to run it. There is nothing worse than staff that cannot respond to a guest’s needs. Event staff members should be “walking information booths” who can answer questions or at least be able to look it up in an accessible place. Staff helpers should have regular meetings before an event to walk through every step of the event, work out wrinkles and assign clear responsibilities.

5. Attrition deadlines: When securing hotel accommodations, special attention must be paid to the attrition clause in the contract. Attrition can be a costly and unnecessary expense, as your organization will be held responsible for unused room nights. This can be avoided. A best practice is to offer incentives such as a discount for early reservations so you can meet your cutoff dates. Make the registration deadline a week to 10 days ahead of the cutoff so you can release any rooms from your room block by then. There will always be last-minute registrants trying to get their names on the rooming list, so you might want to leave a few rooms open.

6. Environment: The environment should be visually stimulating, comfortable and impressive. It also should match the intention of the meeting. How well you run an event is representative of how well you can run your business, and the ambience can paint a picture of the service prospects stand to gain. Some questions to be answered when attempting to roll out the red carpet within budgetary limits: Is the area and or seating comfortable? Is the temperature too warm, too cool? Will you provide a strong WiFi signal for the convenience of guests? Are the A/V tools you need for your meeting working correctly? If not, is there someone available who can assist so that your presentation runs smoothly and seamlessly? Are the bathrooms easily accessible and are there enough? Will you have a clean-up crew to manage trash? Have all of this sorted out BEFORE the event.

7. Networking: Sometimes conferences are so jam-packed that participants don’t have enough time for networking and engaging in important conversations that may come up. Don’t forget to carve out space for this. If offering a multiple-day conference, leave one night open for smaller group dine-arounds to provide networking opportunities. Always include a Q&A session. Consider small-group discussions to explore how participants might implement key strategies or takeaways from the topics and speakers.

8. Cost Control: With events, costs can get way out of control fast! One of the ways companies can stay within budget is by planning well in advance. Reserving a meeting space or room block well in advance is going to secure better pricing. Additionally, if you plan multiple events each year, you might consider establishing an agreement with a hotel or event space to secure a corporate rate, rather than a variable rate. If you’re ordering promotional giveaway items at your event, can you buy in bulk for multiple events to secure a better price-per-item ratio? If your audio-visual needs are too expensive, is there equipment you can purchase and set up on your own instead of renting? Food and beverage too pricy? Is there a deli that does a knock-out job on catering and food presentation? Cost-sensitivity for guests should be a consideration, as well. If your guests are responsible for expensing their own hotel and travel, choosing the right hotel is crucial.

9. Things to “Know Before You Go”: This is a necessary one-to-two pager you send to registered guests prior to the event, giving them detailed information. Participants need to know exactly what to expect when they arrive, where to go, start times, special instructions, etc. This should be emailed (or posted on an event website) a minimum of two weeks in advance. Include airport and hotel information (include WiFi codes), parking, transportation information, meal locations (and hours), dress code, items to bring, information on outings and, most important, contact info. Make sure to include the cell phone number and email address of the event coordinator’s and any other needed contacts. Is there an event station or registration booth they need to check-in with as soon as they arrive? Don’t leave them hanging for any part of the event, wondering what to do or where to be.

10. Making it Memorable: Do something that is unique, fun or thoughtful that will make them remember you. I once attended a barbecue reception at the Ritz, where I received a bottle of pork rub spices the sponsor had put together themselves, with The Ritz monogrammed on the container. I will always remember the event and the woman who prepared the bottles because it was such a nice touch. (I went home and made chicken that weekend with the spices, and it was delicious.) You might want to have a welcome committee greet attendees at the hotel (or pick them up at the airport) and give them a gift bag with a few essentials, such as bottled water, a small snack pack, notepad, pen and a giveaway branded item, such as a luggage tag, a voucher for a free glass of wine or appetizer somewhere within walking distance or a power bank to charge a cell phone. (Functional items are better than tchotchkes.) Ask yourself: What can you do for them that makes them feel like you know who they are and you care? The answer can take you far.

 

Written by Stephanie Heidemann

It’s time to check in with the pundits. No, not THOSE pundits. They’ve said enough already! We’re talking about the marketing communications types and what they see looming for 2017.

While many are ecstatic about the potential for concepts such as virtual reality, programmatic buying, native advertising and chatbots, we thought we’d share a few of their more meat-and-potatoes thoughts.

 

1. Companies will continue to wake up to the concept of content marketing with a renewed focus on thought leadership. They also will seek out the right people and right schedule for creating quality content that resonates and sparks a conversation about their brand.


2. Millennials will continue to rule
. From leveraging in-store apps to creating ads that cater to that generation’s collective mindset, marketers will be thinking young.

3. Companies will spend more on social media
, personalizing content, focusing their messages to smaller groups and, increasingly, mining and analyzing data from social channels to better target and time their outreach.

 

4. About that outreach: Video will continue its tremendous growth as the go-to vehicle for messaging, and content is expected to improve.

 

5. Events marketing and promotion will increase, as companies join the crowds, speaking to them in their chosen venues.

 

6. Some companies will tackle the complicated task of reaching consumers through all of the electronic devices they use daily, especially smart phones, working to assure the messaging fits the medium.

 

7. Marketers shouldn’t let email fall by the wayside in the flurry of new media and devices that will continue to explode.

 

8. Bloggers will retain their importance as influencers in certain niches and should be a valued part of outreach in those areas.

 

9. While (good) writing remains important, graphic designers will take on a heightened role, as consumer preference for visuals (slideshares, infographics, etc.) over text continues to grow.

There you have it: some areas of general agreement for navigating an ever-evolving marketing landscape.
Which leads us to OUR tip for marketing in 2017:
10. Prepare to see ongoing change in marketing media and techniques but don’t be blinded by shiny, new objects. The next big thing may not be the right thing for your organization. No matter how fast and how far marketing can go, success always will depend on how well you know your customers and what appeals to them.

A recent New York Times article, “More Wretched News for Newspapers as Advertising Woes Drive Anxiety,” took me back to my days as a print journalist, when a certain editor, to keep us humble, would say, “Remember, you’re just filling the white space around the ads.”

He was right. At least at that time, studies showed that people, when presented with multiple publishers, subscribed to the newspaper whose ads reflected their local shopping patterns. For some of those people, nothing we ever wrote would be as important as a dollar-off coupon for ground beef.

But I digress.

The issue here is the bleak future of newspapers as they continue to be drained of the lifeblood that is print advertising and the question it raises, that is, where are those ads going? The answer, you may have guessed, is at your fingertips – on your phone and personal devices.

As reported in AdAge, the latest local ad revenue forecast from BIA/Kelsey indicates that revenue from local-focused online ads will exceed that of traditional ads aimed at local audiences by 2018. This “digital transformation,” statistics show, is taking place across the nation and “risks sidelining traditional print ads.” It also isn’t helping the television industry, as a new report by eMarketer projects that U.S. digital ad sales will surpass traditional TV for the first time by the end of this year.

The bright side for advertisers is that the emergence of digital outreach widens, rather than narrows their opportunities, offering new ways to win new customers.

Still, danger lurks, as every type of advertising – from sandwich boards to emails to the most sophisticated digital ad – requires a different type of knowledge and expertise to create and execute correctly, and most all campaigns require a mix of media. Further, when initiating digital outreach, which can far exceed any publication’s circulation or TV’s program viewership, advertisers pretty much have to get it right the first time.

In other words, it’s not for amateurs.

If you’re interested in initiating or transforming your own advertising, let’s start a conversation. We’d be happy to share our insights and help you share your word.

Revelation: We have an inordinate obsession with the letter C.

For instance (we could have said “consider,” but there’s such a thing as overkill), we pride ourselves on:

  • Creativity – but not just for creativity’s sake. Rather, we channel our creativity in ways that make our clients stand out in their markets and industry. It’s all about them, not us.
  • Cooperation – with full understanding that client representatives may be operating within their own constraints. Be it brand standards, budget and/or other mandate or restriction, we incorporate these considerations while striving for maximum impact.
  • Consultation – or not, as the client wishes. Whether the client wants to stay at the helm or puts us in the captain’s seat, we are comfortable in either role.
  • Content – but far more than blocks of text. We believe in a certain kind of alchemy, one that turns words into profits by creating meaningful copy that gets noticed, repeated and acknowledged.
  • Commitment – to always doing our best to help our clients be their best. Admittedly it’s cliché (with no capital C), but we are passionate about our work – and it shows.
  • Collaboration – that creates a strong messaging foundation. In most cases, we start a client engagement with a discovery session to define where that organization has been, is now and wants to be. You’d be surprised how much we can uncover in just a short time.
  • Connections – that generate customer engagement and loyalty for our clients. It’s all about finding that sweet spot in which a bond can be formed.
  • Currency – not the monetary kind, though we obviously are in favor of a good cash flow. This means that we keep up with all the current marketing trends and vehicles, deciding, and anticipating, what will work best for each individual organization.
  • Conversation – that is sustained. This is a particularly big one for us and it is twofold: Next-Mark with our clients and our clients with their prospects and customers.
  • Caring – that goes beyond mere pride in our work. We know our clients are entrusting us with a bit of their future, and we are gratified and humbled by this responsibility.

We understand the critical path to our client’s marketing success.  Give us a call if we can help.

White papers are a great way to demonstrate corporate expertise, create a thought leadership position in an industry and provide value to prospects, customers and others.

Once done, these publications can serve as grist for social media, trade journal articles, presentations and even marketing collateral, with some added spin. When done well, they get passed on, expanding your reach in perhaps unexpected ways. When refreshed, they give you another opportunity to reach out to your target audiences.

Yep, white papers can do a lot – if, that is, you don’t ask them to do too much.

There’s an old saying that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. This sad fate can befall white papers, as well, when too many people with too many ideas attempt to create one solid document. With that in mind, here are a few things to remember when planning and creating a white paper.

  • Choose your writer or writing team carefully. If outsourced, look for experience, expertise and demonstrated success. If internal, make sure you are using subject matter experts who not only have writing talent but also actually want to do it. People who love to write – and are good at it – often will jump at the chance. Those who don’t – or aren’t – can bring progress to a halt.
  • Create an outline of the issue/topic you wish to address and product/service capabilities you want to highlight. Remember: You’re not making a sales pitch; you’re solving a problem or providing elucidation.
  • Decide on the key topics you want to showcase through callouts, bullets, sidebars and graphics to pull the reader through – or back.
  • Stay on topic! Throwing in additional – especially disparate – subjects as you go along dilutes your primary message and doesn’t do other topics justice. If a new subject is that good, consider giving it its own paper.
  • Know what makes your audiences tick. Don’t assume. If your white paper misses their hot buttons, you’re assured of a cold reception.
  • Back up every point you make with facts, statistics, quotes from experts, etc.
  • Set a deadline and meet it. Don’t let it become the project that won’t go away.
  • Make sure the design is as professional as the copy and adds to, rather than detracts from, readability.
  • Once it’s done, actively promote it. Posting it on your web site is not enough.

Think of the white paper as the elder statesman of persuasive writing – knowledgeable, authoritative and impressive. Given the respect it deserves in its creation, it can help your organization reflect those same attributes, building business and reputation.

It’s all around us, and it’s something that you encounter more than you probably realize. Every time you’re shopping at Costco and try that new salsa sample, or when you give yourself a spray of that new perfume at the department store. The idea behind experiential marketing is pretty simple – when we experience a product, we better understand it and thus are more likely to form a lasting memory of it. And in turn, we’re more likely to purchase it.

Simple, right? It’s a straightforward marketing technique, and one that marketers are turning to more and more to engage potential customers. While traditional advertising (radio, print, television) verbally and visually communicate the brand and product benefits, experiential marketing tries to immerse the consumers within the product by engaging as many other human senses as possible. In this way, experiential marketing can encompass a variety of other marketing strategies from individual sampling, to large-scale guerrilla marketing. It’s easy to see why there are so many different terms for experiential marketing – event marketing, on-ground marketing, live marketing, field marketing, and grassroots marketing, to name a few.

A recent Forbes.com article takes a deeper dive into experiential marketing through an interview with Bharat Rupani, President of Interactions Marketing, an experiential marketing agency and subsidiary of Daymon Worldwide. Rupani explains the term as “work done with retailers and brands to connect directly with shoppers – usually through an event that happens inside a store or externally in the community.”

He gives specific examples of experiential marketing that his company has executed, like a three week long grand opening event at a grocery store in Maryland that featured a flash mob, a custom miniature ice cream truck, a selfie booth, kids craft area, outdoor grilling event, and a number of food sampling events. And Advance Auto Parts’ mobile tour to over 30 automotive events across the nation with a 44 foot RV.

Both events gave customers a memorable experience and engaged them to become a part of the brand experience. So what makes experiential marketing campaigns successful? The people, and the interaction the audience has with those people (and ultimately the product or brand). You obviously want the interaction to be a favorable one and one that will leave the person with a positive impression. For this reason, it’s especially important that you have the right people representing the product or brand during these interactions.

According to Rupani, talent acquisition is the biggest challenge when it comes to experiential marketing. In today’s digital world where face-to-face interactions are dwindling, finding candidates who have a passion for human interaction and personal encounters is difficult. “Personal engagement is an art we must keep alive – it’s upon us to hire and train those who can emote and connect with people,” he added.

With experiential marketing, it’s important to take on a quality vs. quantity mentality and realize that it doesn’t have to be overly complicated. It’s really just about the basics of selling 101 – word of mouth and human interaction. With each interaction you are creating a lasting impression of the product for someone; you’re really just selling through creating the experience for the customer.

While experiential marketing is something that many marketers may overlook in today’s growing world of marketing platforms, Rupani emphasizes that it’s simplistic and “old school” principles are something that other forms of marketing simply cannot compete with. “Ultimately if people try your brand and like it – you’ve made an impact that traditional marketing can’t produce.  With so much focus on technology today, experiential marketing is still the real and organic interaction with a brand that so many of us still enjoy and value.”

Do you have a positive experience in experiential marketing (no pun intended!) that has worked for your business? We would love to hear about it!

Sometimes we wonder why it’s so hard for some people to understand the rightful place, and real impact of content marketing in influencing buyer behavior. Maybe it’s a sort of “cover your ears, shut your eyes and hum loudly to yourself” response to the perceived amount of work involved in developing relevant, valuable content. As rightful experts in this arena, trust us when we say it does indeed take a lot of time and energy. However, each time we see the results it generates for our clients, and time and time again it demonstrates why it’s worth every bit of the effort.

The Case for Content Marketing

As reported in an article entitled “The Compelling Case for Content Marketing” on Inc.com, Rand Media recently released a report that showed consumer sentiment continues to shift toward a preference for information over advertisements. And, luckily, many of the specific reasons the survey respondents gave for disliking ads “are things content marketing ameliorates,” according to the article. The fact is, growing numbers of consumers’ buying decisions are based on information they find on their own, and when they find it on their own, they tend to trust the information more.

“Programmatic push messaging is implicit personalization perceived by consumers as irrelevant and inauthentic,” said Erika Trautman, Rapt Media founder and CEO, said in a press release. “Explicit content personalization through choice and discovery builds trust, increases engagement and delivers a truly valuable experience starting at the point of creation. Millennials, in particular, are embracing the value of content discovery, forcing marketers to rethink the way content is created, distributed and consumed.”

Good News!

As we touched on in our last newsletter, the fact of the matter is that consumers have very little interest in branded advertisements that pop up unprompted on their social newsfeeds or web browsers. So in this digital age of information overload how do you reach your target audience?

For those still hiding in their self-made cocoons hoping yesterday’s methods will impact today’s consumers, we have some advice – and some good news to go with it.

The good news is that you likely already have the resources to become the type of thought leader to which potential customers will gravitate. For instance, you know your industry, its challenges and some of the solutions. You have valuable information your prospects and clients don’t. You also have people who are subject matter experts, who may actually want to share that expertise through blogs, white papers, how-to’s, videos, eBooks, social media and so on.

Advice from Next-Mark

Once important piece of advice is to consider partnering with a communications agency (ahem) fluent in content marketing to put it all together for you and position you as an expert in your field. Reaching your consumers is all about providing value, which isn’t necessarily achieved through shameless self-promotion and relentless advertising. So get the right information out there, be consistent, generate easily discoverable, digestible content, and your customers will find YOU.

At the end of the day, it’s about giving people the information they need to succeed in their jobs or tasks or simply enlightening them – a worthy endeavor and a reason to be believed and trusted.

And you can trust us when we say we stand ready to help!

 

To think about how much social media has changed over the past years is almost mind-boggling. Many of us barely remember what life was like before social media blew up; it has become such an integral part of our everyday lives that we already have reached the point where we take for granted how much we rely on it.

At the end of 2015, we talked about what trends to expect in 2016, and just between then and now, things have changed exponentially. In the midst of this change there has been a slew of emerging social platforms that are striving to make their mark in the digital social space. New social sites and apps seem to be popping up faster than you can say “Snapchat.” So among all of the new entries to the field how do we know which ones will take off to become the next Facebook or Instagram? The truth is we don’t know; only time will tell. However, we can make a few predictions based on the direction the social space is currently headed. The following are our predictions for five of the next generation of social platforms.

  1. Periscope

To say this live video streaming app has taken off would be an understatement. Within six months of its March 2015 launch, it reached more than 10 million users and continues to grow in leaps and bounds daily. Such live video streaming seems to be where social media is headed. In the commercial world, it allows brands to come across as both transparent and authentic, unafraid to share their true identity.

  1. Tuurnt

Following in the footsteps of Snapchat, Tuurnt transforms regular visual posts into social events where participation and contribution from both known contacts and public users is encouraged. Tuurnt offers users the unique ability to reply directly to a video or photo while everyone is watching; it allows users to comment or attach media, which creates a video sequence, called Tuurnt (in essence, an interactive digital chain letter)

  1. Yubl

Based in the United Kingdom, this app promises to be the next-generation networking and messaging platform. Just 10 weeks after its launch, Yubl became the most downloaded app in the UK, surpassing Skype, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Periscope. So what makes Yubl different from all the other social messaging apps out there? One word: customization. It gives users a blank canvas to create something entirely from scratch; you can choose a background color, throw in photos and videos from your camera roll move them around, plaster on stickers and change the fonts. This has not yet launched in the United States, but once it does, it’s going to make an impact!

  1. Slack

Slack is yet another social messaging platform. It is focused on team-centric messaging and group chat outlets and allows for integration with a multitude of other services and programs. With the evolution of social messaging platforms making the shift from single thread messaging groups, to essentially mini social networks, if Slack continues to evolve and shift with the tastes of social consumers, it will surely endure!

  1. Blab

Remember when we said live video streaming is the next era of social interaction? Blab is a video messaging platform on which four people can video chat simultaneously as an audience watches, comments and can even instantly switch places with one of the four video chatters. Users can host their own talk shows and debates or simply hang out with friends.

 

As new social platforms continue to emerge and make an impact, social marketing strategies will also be required to constantly be reinvented to incorporate those relevant to an organizations needs. At Next-Mark we are proud of our unique ability to evolve and reinvent strategies in order to provide our clients with best solutions to take their businesses to the next level.

Have another one to add to the list or a thought on any of these? Leave us a comment!