FB’s Conversation Starter, Amazon = the New Omni-Channel & Insta Polls!

October 11, 2017: Louder, Better, Faster, Stronger – Facebook’s new conversation starter, Instagram helps you make the difficult decisions, YouTube delivers, LinkedIn shapes up, and Amazon emerges as its own discipline.

Here’s what’s worth knowing this week:

Table of Contents

Conversation Starter

If an ad and AIM had a baby, it would be FB’s new messages-as-a-business objective. Last week, Zuck & Co. unveiled a ‘Messages Objective’ for Facebook (and Insta) ad campaigns. The objective? ‘Drive conversations with the people who are most likely to answer’. Props to Zuck & Co. for studying the value of what real-time conversation can add – prompting it as one of the few offered objectives in the platform. Now, you have a new method to deliver in-moment, personalized communication to consumers.

What it means, IRL: Social ads are – wait for it – social. Despite the fact that our native online social behavior is rooted in chat rooms and instant messenger, up until now, Facebook ad objectives were solely focused on driving anything but conversation – reach, traffic, conversions. The Messages Objective allows you to measure the impact of paid not just by static likes or comments, but by the value of conversations they started. TBD if this is a new format consumers will actively engage with – but given how often comments are used for social customer service, we’re cautiously optimistic.

Oh how far AOL [could have] gone… now it’s just one perma away message from interwebs history. g2g byes.

Make it work: Messenger ads introduces on-demand service and personalization to the experience. Use the power of FB’s targeting capabilities to spark a conversation with consumers, not just to elicit a social reaction. As such, influencer and brand-generated content needs to be designed with this in mind. To start, work with your influencers to understand what type of content inspires conversation among their audiences on Facebook and Instagram. Then, leverage their experience through #sponsored AMAs, curated gift guides (holidays are coming!) and office-hour like takeovers to drive the conversation forward. Here are five tips to get you up and running.

Survey Says

Spike attention, recall, and get instant feedback – Instagram Stories are no longer a leisure sport. Last week, Instagram launched its newest feature – Poll stickers. Now, users can pose a question, encourage their followers to vote, and see ‘real-time’ results. Can’t decide between that slice of pizza and the meatball sub? No problem – ask your followers.

On a macro level, Insta Polls provide brands with yet another avenue to actively communicate with consumers and for conversations to drive business objectives. Sound familiar? The release of the Polls feature presents a pivotal opportunity for brands to instantaneously receive feedback unlike ever before. Brands should work with influencers from an ideation and creative standpoint to not only incorporate Polls into their content, but also to gain key insights from their own followers.

Famous or Nah?

What do Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran, and Issa Rae all have in common? YouTube made them famous (#SorryKanye). A recent study by the Googs + Nielsen found that collabs with YouTube creators are 4X more effective at driving lift in brand familiarity than those with celebs (in the traditional sense). But what really separates the Amy Schumers from the Jenna Marbles of the world?

Today, the idea of ‘celebrity’ is fluid – vastly different depending on audience context and influencer motivation. Our take – why does this have to be an either/or strategy? Influencers – across the spectrum – work better when they’re working together.

For Your Coworker Who Always Snaps You @Work

Time to add LinkedIn to the list of apps one-upping Snap. Last week, LinkedIn revealed new ‘Snapchat-like’ video filters. While video isn’t totally new to LinkedIn, location-activated filters are.

Designed to work similarly to Snapchat’s Geofilters and resemble conference badges, LinkedIn users can now use the filters to showcase their attendance at events and conferences. If you are working with influencers on LinkedIn, these filters may be something to consider: video content is shared 20x more than any other type of content on LinkedIn.

And if you are the influencer – it’s a new way to highlight your #SpeakerStatus.

It’s Amazon’s World, We’re Just Livin’ In It

Leading agencies are helping brands play offense and defense with Amazon. Just as we’ve all built out paid and social media strategies, Amazon is emerging as a marketing discipline in its own right.

Last week, 360i launched an Amazon Marketing practice to ‘help clients succeed in that ecosystem.’ The strategy incorporates how to keep-up with the number and variety of Amazon’s trademark features, with special attention being paid to voice technologies. More or less, Amazon = the new omni-channel, with new rules we all need to be prepared for.