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JUSTIN SMITH: I did see some questions coming in from
Twitter, so we can start there.
One of them, I think I saw, somebody was asking about how
iOS 6 was impacting YouTube video.
And I think the more interesting--
rather than Apple dropping YouTube from iOS 6 impacting
Google and YouTube, it seems like it's actually impacted
Apple a little bit more.
With the YouTube dropping and then the Google Maps, people
kind of have been switching more towards Android.
The Samsung Galaxy S, which is kind of the flagship Android
phone, was the most popular phone last
quarter in terms of sales.
That's pretty significant, I think, considering that the
new iPhone just came out.
So we'll see what happens in the next couple quarters, but
there are some other players that are coming on to the
scene that are kind of taking a bigger presence.
ANDREA ABER: If you do have questions,
just raise your hand.
JP is walking around with a microphone for
all of you as well.
MELANIE EYERMAN: Probably good to hear someone else's voice
for a second.
Come on, you don't have to hide behind.
There you go.
JUSTIN SMITH: There's one in the back, too.
AUDIENCE: I don't tweet very quick-- is
this not working either?
BRUCE WILLIAMS: I don't tweet very quickly,
so I'll just shout.
AUDIENCE: Earlier on, you metioned that 25% of American
consumers were brand loyal.
I'm assuming that's kind of the entire spectrum of
American consumers.
Do you have--
MELANIE EYERMAN: Correct.
AUDIENCE: --any thoughts for how that breaks up from a B2B
perspective?
MELANIE EYERMAN: The report we looked at was just kind of
Americans in general.
I would assume B2B would be a little bit higher just because
they kind of make more of that connection with the sales rep.
It's a little bit different than, say, Bounty, who my best
friend is like this paper towel's way better.
I don't have conversations about paper towels all the
time, but [INAUDIBLE]
I don't know why that came to my mind first.
But you're going to be less loyal because your friends are
going to actually have a lot more implication on your
decision than necessarily from a professional realm and B2B.
JUSTIN SMITH: I would assume, though, that B2B brand loyalty
is dropping, too.
And maybe for the same reasons that B2C would be.
It's really--
Mel doesn't have conversations with people about paper towels
every day, but they're going on online and
we're seeing those.
And maybe she would have a conversation with somebody who
lives in California if they were here, but, oh wait,
they're on Facebook.
So those conversations are a little bit easier to have now.
So it makes sense.
MELANIE EYERMAN: Be interesting to watch.
AUDIENCE: How you doing?
I have a question from a old-school industry.
I'm in trucking.
Talking about B2B marketing to trucking companies.
How do you determine what fits?
How do you not be Chris Farley?
And then how do you track--
[INAUDIBLE]
go into metrics?
How do you track to make sure what [? your ?] decision that
we make, that we made the right decision
and we're going foward?
JUSTIN SMITH: Well, there are a number of tracking tools
that you can use, from Google Analytics to some of the ones
that we use for social media, SDL, Radian 6.
There are so many tools that will do
that for you, actually.
So they'll monitor engagement.
They'll monitor traffic, so you can actually see if you
post a video, is that driving traffic to your website?
With a combination of those tools, you can actually really
start to see what's working and what's not.
And that's a really important step is to take that extra set
up time to get that monitoring set up because you could be
doing something and think, oh, this is great.
People are going to love it, and it could be a total flop.
So be sure that you're doing these monitoring--
MELANIE EYERMAN: Some quick things you can do though, too,
because I know we can't always afford monitoring tools.
If you think there's a presence on Twitter, go and
start searching some key words that are
related to your brand.
If you don't see them, it's probably not where you're
going to engage.
Hit up some forum boards, even just a quick Google search.
See what comes up first, and then go in there and see
what's going on with those conversations.
Do I need to jump in here?
Oh wait, that doesn't make any sense.
I'm going to leave that alone.
So there's some smaller things you can do as well, except for
those big monitoring systems.
But the greatest thing, too, about social media and all
this data collection I've been talking about is the fact you
can fail faster and re-correct the ship.
So it's allowing us to fail quickly and then change our
strategy almost in real time.
The days of having a yearlong marketing plan
are pretty much over.
JUSTIN SMITH: And just one more quick point on that.
Everyone I talk to, so many people I talk to, think, oh,
my brand isn't really that cool.
The things that I deal with people aren't talking about.
They are.
These conversations are happening.
And like Mel said, just Google it, just see.
And you'll find these conversations, and you can
actually use those.
Over here, JP?
MELANIE EYERMAN: Run.
JUSTIN SMITH: Go, go.
He's carrying two microphones.
BRUCE WILLIAMS: He's prepared.
AUDIENCE: OK.
So we've been talking about optimizing different
applications to go across the board.
And you were mentioning this [? tout ?]
is a 15-second video, and then we have
YouTube and other methods.
What, right now, is the ideal time for a business to
business video which would be more instructional or
advertise--
how do you delineate between those?
JUSTIN SMITH: So a lot of it--
you can't just say this is the length for a B2B video.
And it does make a difference if it's a promotional video,
if it's a how to.
It really does depend.
But this goes back to the monitoring and kind of
analysis that we talked about just a second
ago where, try something.
If you make a 15-minute video, which is probably too long,
but if you do-- and there are some cases where that would
make sense.
But try it, and you can actually monitor
when people drop off.
So there are some tools that you can use to actually see,
depending on what video player you're using, but did they
stop watching after two minutes?
Did they get bored?
And that might just kind of be a clue that you need to rework
your content a little bit to make it either more engaging
or just more concise.
[? AUDIENCE: Is there a ?] rule of thumb, though, I mean,
definitely don't go over this long or [INAUDIBLE]?
MELANIE EYERMAN: We've had some B2B clients that
actually-- it's depending what your audience and
what it's for, too.
Because we've had some put up webinars from things that are
over an hour long, and no one drops off because it's
valuable content.
As long as you're providing them something that they need
and they're going to want to keep engaging with it, you're
going to be OK.
But for quick hits, over 30 seconds, people are just going
to kind of start, I'm done.
So just making sure you understand what you're putting
out there, who you're trying to reach, and what you want
them to do.
That call to action is extremely important as well,
so you want them to get to the end to do that call to action.
AUDIENCE: So with all these social sites, as well as
companies' websites, how often do you have to feed content to
the social sites?
And how often should you feed content to your main website?
MELANIE EYERMAN: I think this kind of goes along with the
earlier Twitter question about content marketing and how it
can help socialize your brand as well.
It really depends.
I don't want you to sit here and think you have to put up a
Facebook post twice a day.
There's no reason, necessarily, to do that.
Facebook is not as real time as Twitter.
For some of us, we recommend that clients--
depends on your resources.
No one really--
how many people here have a dedicated social media person
that actually posts to their page every day?
I see two, three, four, five hands up.
So, that being said, creating a [? content ?] calendar and
talking to everyone in your departments.
You need to be talking to everyone.
Everyone needs to be giving content.
At Thunder Tech, we have a competition because we try to
get these guys to give us stuff all the time, and they
won't unless we give them a happy hour.
But it works.
So getting that content, being able to fill in the calendar.
Facebook like I said, once a week, it's OK.
But just making sure the most important part is monitoring
those comments.
If someone's trying to interact with you, don't
ignore them.
So we have checklists that we make.
Like check Facebook once a day to see if there's a comment.
Make sure I post on Wednesdays.
Making sure you're looking at those stats, too, to see when
most people are commenting and sharing and play with it.
Don't forget that social media doesn't shut off at 5 o'clock.
Try scheduling things in advance.
Facebook now let's you schedule these
things, which is great.
I don't want to just talk about Facebook either.
With Twitter, it's more real time.
We want you to be there every day.
But again, there's tools where you can schedule them.
But go back and check your messages, set up alerts.
Don't feel like you have to go on every channel, all the
time, every day.
It's just kind of what you can do with your strategy.
PRESENTER: We have a question from Twitter.
And just to answer Craig's-- yes, there are more
bagels in the lobby.
Another actual question is, should brands encourage their
staff to become advocates on social media and how?
MELANIE EYERMAN: So this is a touchy subject.
[? This ?] was funny.
As I was coming in this morning, I
listened to Elvis Duran.
Does anyone listen to that?
And they were talking about--
did you hear when they were talking about Facebook?
And employers are actually making people hand over their
Twitter passwords and accounts to see what
they're doing there?
No one?
Crickets, never mind.
I know I talk to Mark a lot, our operations department,
about whether or not that's really legal.
It's very illegal.
But some brands are more social, and they've actually
really encouraged their employees to go out and talk
about their brand.
We encourage that because it makes you a little bit more
transparent.
It also involves a little bit more of a trust factor.
[? But ?] with B2B, it's more how do you
want them to interact?
We have guidelines for our employees.
Ours are probably a little bit more loose
than some other brands.
It's really just don't be stupid or don't talk bad about
our clients.
It's something, internally, you really have to decide.
All right, do we want to get our employees on board?
If we do, how do we do it?
At the very least, everyone needs to have some sort of
policy in place.
So if something catastrophic does happen, there is some
kind of repercussions or the employee actually knows what's
going to happen without them just coming back and being
like, well, I thought it was OK.
You never talked to me about it.
There is a very minimal education for employees and
how to promote their own company.
Really need to start doing that more.
JUSTIN SMITH: And you can be selective about that, too.
It's not all or none.
If you have employees that are already advocates for your
brand and they're are already out there in the world and
being seen, it might make sense to put them on social
media as well, versus everyone if there are trust issues and
things like that.
You can be selective about it.
MELANIE EYERMAN: Any more real life questions?
Any more Twitter questions?
All right.
All right.
ANDREA ABER: So since you haven't heard me talk in a
little while, I'm back.
Again, we do thank everybody for coming here this morning.
For those of you who obviously saw trends.thundertech.com
from the very beginning, as I did mention from the get go,
we'll be sending out an email most likely on Thursday that
will direct you to that URL.
At that time, you'll be able to see the videos that were in
the presentation today, as also all the different videos
of those 10 trends.
You can forward that URL onto to any of your co-workers, but
they will be living on YouTube.
There are several Thunder Tech employees here in the room
this morning.
If you have any questions after the event, feel free to
grab one of us.
We can answer those questions for you.
If you come up with a question tomorrow, in a week from now,
feel free to contact your account manager.
If you do not have an account manager, just reach out to us
on our website, or you can call us and we can have those
conversations with you.
Again, we do thank you all for being here this morning.
And I'm sure you all have to get back to work, so we'll let
you all go.
Thank you.
JUSTIN SMITH: Thanks.
MELANIE EYERMAN: Thanks.
APPLAUSE]
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