After the success of our previous event on the 18th February, we now confirm our second forth coming event for this year!

Social Media: Maximising your brand presence on Facebook, YouTube and other social networks is the title of our upcoming event to be held on the 31st of March, from 4pm to 7pm, at the Soho House in Old Compton Street in London.

The knowledge sharing event for marketing professionals is being hosted together with B! Digital and in collaboration with Viadeo and Google. Speakers at the seminar, other than 77’s MD, Marco Corsaro, include Bruce Daisley, Sales Leader, YouTube & Display, who will be discussing how to make the best out of Video Marketing using YouTube, followed by Ben Duncan-Clark , Survey Manager, Viadeo who will share insights about market research in professional social networks.

The main objective for this series of social media events which we hope to continue running throughout the rest of 2010, is to provide professional marketers with a better understanding of the opportunities and benefits social media networks hold in store for brands.

Social media continues to grow at an exhilarating pace, it can become challenging for marketers to identify the best way to maximise some of the new online tools and channels existent in today’s social media marketing landscape. It is our intention to take a look at  how to utillize some of the key social networks such as Facebook and YouTube, to enhance marketing efforts, increase online brand presence and boost business ROI.

RSVP here!

Visit our 77 Facebook Fan Page to stay tuned for any updates, event photos + more on future events!

You can also visit www.77agency.com for more on 77Agency.

Google’s user-generated video website, YouTube, will make available automatic speech recognition captioning for its video selection.

This new service could be revolutionary since it will open up a huge share of its content to people who are hearing-impaired, and will also lead to creating a network of videos that could be subtitled between many languages.

comScore’s January 2010 press release regarding online video usage reported that 170 million U.S. Internet users watched online video during the month of November.

Online video viewing continued to reach record levels in November with nearly 31 billion videos (viewers watched an average of 182 videos per viewer).

This feature will not only help out the hard of hearing, it will make them feel connected to society, especially one that continuously communicates itself through online video.

YouTube has offered closed captioned videos in the past, however, the captions were provided by the video producer, and represented a very small share of YouTube’s database.

Today, the new speech recognition technology will allow for automatic transcriptions on all of YouTube’s videos, even if a few funny errors happen to pop up here and there.

Below is a list of activities to help you bring your physical event online by leveraging online tools like social networks and the likes.

BLOG

If you have a blog already, make sure you write about the given event well in advance and also a few days prior to it. Look into your sector’s blogging community and identify the bloggers that would be most likely interested in blogging about the event, and of course, don’t forget to invite them to the event.

CREATE A FACEBOOK EVENT

If your brand or service already has a Facebook Page, include the event on the page, plus highlights of the event, keynote speakers, images, ways to participate, etc. Event’s can be easily shared between users and if you like, you may also promote your event by launching a highly targeted Facebook ad campaign.

After the event, you can add photos of the participants, tag people and even thank them for joining. It’s a great way to start conversation between you and your audience.

TWEET! + HASHTAGS

Tweeting during the event can generate great buzz and get people talking. If people talk and comment about it, that’ll get more people interested and awaken curiosity about upcoming events. A few days ago I attended the Forum Digitale della Comunicazione here in Milan and it was great in the sense that they had a Twitter live stream being projected in a huge screen and all tweets being shown included the dedicated event hashtag: #fd10tag (no idea why they added the ‘tag’ at the end).

The good thing about hashtags is that those who couldn’t make it to the event can 1. keep up with the live streaming as the event occurs and 2. look up news on the certain event using the hashtag on the Twitter search field.

SOCIAL NETWORK STATUSES

We all love the ‘what are you doing’ or ‘what’s happening’ questions, but moreover, we love answering them. Why not make good use out of these and promote your upcoming event, where you’re headed, which event your attending, why you’re looking forward to it and who your favorite guest speakers are, etc etc.

USE BUSINESS NETWORKS

Take advantage of online communities such as LinkedIn or Viadeo to promote your event. Networks such as these are advantageous for joining groups and communities where you can easily find subjects related to your industry or sector. Also, now that Twitter updates can be synced with your LinkedIn account people can keep up with your tweets and current activities as they are broadcasted on your status update.

UPLOAD PHOTOS + VIDEOS

A good way to generate some good noise is by creating photo albums on sites such as Flickr or Facebook or by uploading videos on YouTube. Online sharing applications are the best to manage your photos and share them with the world. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words…People enjoy viewing pictures/videos, not only are they entertaining, they also serve to inform and give people a general idea of what the event, conference, roundtable was like.

Try these out and let us know how it goes!

If any of you thought that social media marketing was not worth your or your brand’s time, the following figures should make you think otherwise.

In December 2009, consumers spent more than five and a half hours on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, up 82% from the same time last year.  The total amount of time users spent online in December 2008 was a little more than three hours compared to the two hours and ten minutes from the previous year.

Facebook alone captured 67% of the global social media audience last month, with 206.9 million unique visitors. In the U.S. alone, Facebook towered over its peers on the list of most visited social networking sites.

That said, we can discuss how The Academy with its Grammy ceremony has decided to embrace this shift in attempt to speak the language of it’s audience- the fans- and thousands of followers which are their raison d‘être.

The We’re All Fans website showcases a myriad portraits of Grammy-nominated artists composed entirely of real-time, fan-generated YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook postings. The content is continuously updated and users can select from a list of nominated artists like Beyoncé, LL Cool J, U2, Kings of Leon and click on any piece of content, tweets, images or YouTube videos they want to visualize.

The site is full of videos made by real fans  performing to the beat of their favorite songs from their favorite artists, all of which go live and are available for everyone to see, including the entire CBS audience.

One cool aspect of the site is the FanBuzz Visualizer which is a sort of dashboard that works as a real-time visualization of fan activity which includes all the posts, mentions, comments of nominated artists across the entire web. The insights are then presented in two different graphs, ‘today’s posts’ and ‘total posts’ where you can visualize which artist(s) currently has the most mentions.

And better yet, fans can share the information with friends and engage more and more people into commenting and mentioning their favorite artists by creating an endless viral effect across the internet. It’s pretty great to see an institution such as The Academy embrace social media and find new and innovative ways of communicating with their  now web-savvy audiences.

Many people/brands are still wondering how to measure and figure out their ROI with the use of Social Media. Qualman, author of the book Socialnomics has put together the YouTube video ‘Social Media ROI: Socialnomics’, which hits some very interesting facts and examples of how businesses are leveraging social networks to drive business growth and increase brand awareness.

Some of the highlighting points you’ll find in the video include:

1.  Over 300,000 businesses have a presence on Facebook and roughly a 1/3 of these are small businesses.

2.  Gary Vaynerchuk grew his family business from $4 million to $50 million using social media.  Gary’s eccentric personality and offbeat oenophile knowledge have proven a natural path to success with his Wine TV Library.Vaynerchuk found first hand that $15,000 in Direct Mail = 200 new customers, $7,500 Billboard = 300 new customers, $0 Twitter = 1,800 new customers.

3. Lenovo was able to achieve cost savings by a 20% reduction in call center activity as customers go to community website for answers

4.  Burger King’s Whopper Sacrifice Facebook program incented users to give up ten of their Facebook friends in return for a free Whopper.  The estimated investment forwhopper-sacrifice this program was less than $50,000 yet they received 32 million media impressions which roughly estimated equals greater than $400,000 in press/media value.  Which to put in context is somewhat like reaching the entire populations of 19 states (understanding this doesn’t account for unique vs. repeat visitors, etc.)

5.  Dell sold $3,000,000 worth of computers on Twitter

Watch the video:

The most popular video site in the planet has just launched a new ad format, currently available in the U.K., France, Italy, Canada, Germany, Spain and The Netherlands– YouTube Promoted Videos. The new ad format allows for advertisers to choose, through the AdWords interface, a promoted video ad template so that when a YouTube viewer clicks on your promotion, they see your video. You only pay when people click to see your video – not when people see your promotion.

The YouTube Promoted Video ad option consists of a thumbnail on the left and three lines of text on the right. When a user clicks on a video ad, he/she will be taken to the YouTube page or channel with the video. Any user can promote ads on YouTube for just a few dollars a day, though most of the promotions on the site are run by larger organizations.

According to Nielsen, online video streaming is growing slowly but surely. This September, total video streams increased 24.8% compared to 11.2 billion streams in the same period last year. YouTube in particular leads over 50% of all video streams in the U.S., a total of 6.7 billion streams.

Just like sponsored links on Google, advertisers will be able to pay for their Promoted Video when users click on the ad. In addition, advertisers will also be able to add a ‘call-to-action’ clickable overlay on videos to engage people and drive them to their websites.

Watch the YouTube Promoted Video presentation:

Last Thursday, for the second time in Italy, 77Agency and Buongiorno Marketing Services, in collaboration with Key-Com and BootB, presented 360° Marketing: Using creativity to integrate offline, social & mobile activities, at the beautiful Adriano Hotel in Rome.

This time, the keynote speaker was Angelo Liverani, Agency Relationship Manager- Google Italy, who spoke about the benefits and opportunities that the greatest platform for user-generated content on the Web– YouTube– has to offer. Liverani also talked about the role of YouTube in the media mix including targeted advertising campaigns along with several case studies.

77Agency, who in 2009 was officially recognized as Google Analytics Authorized Consultant and Google Website Optimizer Consultant and who currently has a portfolio of clients such as Lavazza, Dimensione Danza, Barclaycard, RadioDeejay, RCS Group, Lottomatica, JP Morgan and Saxo Bank, aimed to offer to the exclusive attendees of the seminars, useful insights about the importance of using creativity in the development of multichannel campaigns, the integration of online campaigns with offline activities and finally, mobile social media.

Other additional speakers included Key-Com, who spoke about the importance of merging online marketing initiatives with the offline world. As we know, billions of people are now online, and the rapid growth of emerging technologies and social communities is at a very high point. In addition, innovative advertising campaigns can capture the overflow from the online world, while at the same time merging it with traditional offline mediums to engage the right audiences in a direct and creative manner.

Buongiorno MS on the other hand, explained how social networking and consumer generated medium have moved beyond computers. There’s a bigger audience that’s now accessing their favorite social network from their mobile devices, therefore, there’s definitely a monetizing opportunity there for marketers.

Last but not least, BootB, the online pitching engine, enlightened the crowd with its innovative concept of giving brands online access to an unlimited amount of creative proposals from which they can choose without going through the hassle of booking meetings or tweaking strategies continuously.

77Agency’s next seminar, Developing a Coherent Facebook and Social Media Strategy, will be held at the Soho House London, October 15th. Book your place now at seminarslondon@77agency.com

About a week ago, Simon Fuller, a journalist from a UK-based online publication brand-e.biz, approached us for information for an article he was writing on luxury brands and their involvement in social media; how to operate across social media, reasons why to get involved and how to go about it.

Our MD, Marco Corsaro highlighted the various reasons why brands should look into integrating a social media strategy into their online marketing initiatives as to not miss out on any valuable opportunities and the importance of providing fresh, new content in order to keep audiences engaged.

Here is an abstract from the article:

High-end sociability. Luxury brands are facing something of a dilemma when it comes to social media. On the one hand, everyone else seems to be at it, and they certainly don’t want to miss out. On the other, they’re all about luxury- and that means maintaining a certain distance from the consumer.

“With regards to luxury consumers, we know that they consider the Internet as one of the primary sources of information about luxury products,” says Marco Corsaro, MD of new media marketing outfit 77Agency. “They spend more time online than using any other media, [we know] that a higher percentage of them than average are Internet shoppers 75% versus 70% – and that they are twice as likely to be involved in consumer-generated content online.

“Having said that, many luxury brands have been slow in taking the lead in managing their presence in social media networks, missing out on important opportunities to engage directly with consumers and brand ambassadors,” he adds.

But it looks like slow-poke brands won’t be able to keep holding back, since consumers chat about them across social networks anyway.

“It’s no longer a question of avoidance,” says Corsaro. “Brands already feature strongly in social media exchanges as consumers use Facebook, Twitter and other networks to express their feelings and exchange opinions about brands and products on a daily basis.”

To read the full article click here.

Apart from Michael Jackson’s death and the Iranian elections, two news stories that greatly increased total time spent for online video in the month of June, July continued to prove to be a strong month with 21.4 billion videos viewed during the month.

According to comScore Video Metrix, 158 million US Internet users watched videos in July, it’s an audience record hit. In addition, the duration of the average online video was 3.7 minutes and the average viewer watched about 500 minutes of video.

Also in July, Google websites ranked as the top U.S. video property with 8.9 billion videos viewed, while YouTube accounted for more than 99% of all videos viewed.

Here are some more facts from the comScore research:

- 120.3 million viewers watched 8.9 billion videos on YouTube.com (74.1 videos per viewer)
- 48.2 million viewers watched 518.6 million videos on MySpace.com (10.8 videos per viewer)
- The average Hulu viewer watched 12.0 videos, totaling 1 hour and 13 minutes of videos per viewer
- The duration of the average online video was 3.7 minutes

What do these results tell us? Well, for starters, these are all positive signs for the online video industry. Both the quality and amount of content being uploaded online is greatly increasing as well as the audience watching it.

Moreover, trends show that people are accessing the internet more and more while the average time spend watching TV is declining. In fact, Microsoft predicts that internet consumption is set to overtake TV by 2010 as the most used form of media.

It is very important for advertisers and marketers to take these predictions and statistics into consideration and brainstorm on any alternative strategy in which the two (TV/online videos) can converge in order to take advantage of both consumer audiences.

And most importantly, don’t forget to optimize your online videos for YouTube or any other website to achieve a good position on the search results!

Social media for some people is just a fad. Many believe it’s a quick, easy way to go about reaching a goal and that’s it. Been there, done that…neeext!

Companies use it to grow business, which is not necessarily something you can achieve overnight. It’s a long-term effort.

Yes, social media has it’s downsides too. For instance, once you’re in it, you’re in it for good. Everyone- followers, customers, friends, subscribers and prospects expect you to do a good job. Social media does not protect brands. Make the wrong move and all you will create is negative buzz out there. We’ve heard both horror and  success stories, but because your customers and employees are talking about you, the least you can do, specially when in doubt, is listen, understand, then engage.

Seems like social media done wrong is worse than not doing it at all. So businesses want to join in and take advantage of the long-lasting benefits it’s got to offer. But first, you need to understand what each social network is about prior to spending your marketing money.

In other words, research. Which of the main networks (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube) do you want to focus on? Should you also consider blogs or forums?

Next step, what is your company trying to achieve?

1. Build online brand presence
2. Generate sales and leads
3. Generate traffic to the website
4. Gauge feedback and use that to better your product or service
5. Generate links to the website
6. Provide customer care and problem solving
7. And the list goes on.

Also, the faces who will be handling these initiaves behind the scenes should follow certain requirements. For instance, they must have a deep and technical understanding of the business products and services. They should be a ‘people person’ and be good at interacting with others as well as providing customer service.

A general understanding of how the different types of social media work is definitely a must. Each type has its own set of rules and serve for different purposes. Not to mention there’s social networks, social communities, social news sites, social sharing sites, etc.

Keep track of your activities. Whether its the number of posts, updates, news feeds, images, videos, comments, new content, reviews, you should keep count in order to be able to review your outcomes and identify whether it’s time to pull the cord or just keep going.

To know about Big Brands using social media, take a look at this post from Mashable.