Fidgeting With Marketing: What Marketers Can Learn From The Success Of The Fidget Spinner

By Michael Jacobsen( Digital Marketing Expert from Toronto)

They are everywhere. You can’t escape them. Spinning around on fingers and spinning on the minds of many consumers. Fidget spinners has caused quiet a stir (or should I say spin) in the last few months to kids everywhere. For those of you who live under a rock, Fidget Spinners are a piece of plastic with holes in them that you flick to spin. Sounds simple. They were created to help people with attention deficit and other special needs concentrate in school. Since then, they have taken off and are being spun by millions of kids around the world. A simple product that took the world by storm. Here are 3 things that marketers can learn from the Fidget Spinner.

1. Be Universal

The cool thing with the Fidget Spinner is that anyone can use it. People of all ages can take their finger and flick the plastic to watch it spin. Marketers need to be able to reach out to their target audience but they also need to make their message universal. You want your message to be able to understand and available to anyone. They could have marketed the Fidget Spinners as a toy to cope with ADHD but instead made it more universal.

2. Build Brand Ambassadors

I have never seen an ad for Fidget Spinners on tv. I don’t think I saw any ads online. So how did I hear about them? I heard about them from the news media and friends with kids. Other people built up a reputation for the product and finally I caved in and bought one. The company never used an ad on me. They let other people build up the product. News media ate it up and really helped the Fidget Spinner become what it is today. It’s always best to let other people do the marketing for you. Reach out to influencers and the rest will be easy.

3. Keep It Simple

The interesting thing about the fidget spinner is that it doesn’t have any electronics in it. Nowadays, almost all toys or things we use are connected to Wifi and needs to be charged up, but not the Fidget Spinner. It’s so simple. People like simple things and same with marketing. Don’t overhype or add all this razzle dazzle. Just be authentic and understandable. People prefer authenticity over a show.

• Michael Jacobsen is a Digital Marketing Expert from Toronto. For more information or questions that you may have about this blog or Digital Marketing, please contact Michael at michaelbjacobsen@yahoo.comor on Twitter @marketing_mbj. 

Takeaways From Day 2 Of F8 (Facebook Developers Conference)

By Michael Jacobsen (Digital Marketing Expert from Toronto)

Day 2 of F8 started out with Mike Schroepfer, Facebook CTO, taking the stage. Mike unveiled Facebook’s 10 year plan and dove deep into the 3 main pillars of the plan. These being 1,Connectivity 2, Artificial Intelligence and 3, Virtual Reality/ Augmentated Reality. Mark Zuckerberg has mentioned this plan in the past.

Facebook is looking into and investing into technology that can connect those who are not online to get connected. The examples they listed was Teragraph, MM-Wave, and Aquila. These technologies can deliver large amounts of data easily to people who aren’t connected.

Next was Artifical Intelligence. They want to teach computers to learn the world around us and plan and predict the future. They mentioned bots and auto-captions. Mike mentioned the difficulty the AI has of understanding simple human behaviour. The fun example was explaining to an AI that pepperoni pizza is not for vegetarians.

Mike finished off talking about VR/AR. One of the coolest breakthroughs is the new 360 camera Facebook is developing that lets the viewer move and the image moves with them. These cameras will be able to create more depth.

Yael Maguire then took the stage. He dove into explaining the pros and cons of certain connectiveness and then explained how Facebook’s 3 technologies were making connectivity more accesible. He explained Telegraph, MM-wave, and Aquila.

After that 2 more speakers talked about picture storage, AR, and VR. The two speakers gave a history of the internet and the rise of VR.

The one that really peaked by interest though was Regina Dugan. She had the most interesting topic of the night. That is making your thought appear online just by thinking them. Imagine being able to have your feelings and thoughts understood by a machine.

• Michael Jacobsen is a Digital Marketing Expert from Toronto. For more information or questions that you may have about this blog or Digital Marketing, please contact Michael at michaelbjacobsen@yahoo.comor on Twitter @marketing_mbj. 

 

 

3 Key Takeaways From The 2017 F8 (Facebook Developers Conference)

By Michael Jacobsen (Digital Marketing Expert from Toronto)

The keynote speech by Mark Zuckerberg set the tone early for what was expected from the hour and a half keynote speech from 5 different speakers. It was “We’re making the camera the first augumentated reality platform.” The keynote ranged from explaining augmented reality effects to Messenger 2.0. Here are some of the key takeaways for marketers from F8.

1. Creating Excitement From The Mundane With Augmentated Reality- Mark Zuckerberg and Deb Liu

The keynote started by looking at Augmentated Reality and the use of creating effects within real 3D spaces. SLAM ( a tool that allows you to insert text or objects) was key for the Augmentated Reality session. Being able to create and identify certain things digitaly and insert them in a physical setting was very interesting. You can leave notes to friends in certain areas or as well create art and have friends be able to see it within the city. Augmentated Reality seems to be Facebook’s new baby. They know people are sharing images more than words nowadays and they are trying to recreate and be better than their rival Snapchat. Facebook will allow users to creat their own filter and effects and be able to have thousands of filters unlike Snapchat. These filter will make mundane moments exciting and fun. People will also be able to interact with objects in a physical setting online. Overall, with Facebook enhancing object recognition, people can create around their physical world using digital tools and platforms.

2. Virtual Reality Will Change The Way We Interact- Rachel Franklin 

VR is said to be the next biggest social platform. We will be able to connect with others and live in a virtual world in which we can create. You can take your friends anywhere and interact with them in ways you never thought possible.  The VR app is called Facebook Spaces. You can invite up to 3 friends and use Facebook chat to reach others. Building your avatar will be a very customizable experience and will be able to match based on your Facebook photos. This will change the way we share experiences.

3. Messenger is now becoming  like Yellow Pages for businesses – David Marcus

The key trend from this section is that businesses are benefiting from being on Messenger. Companies have seen major lift from just being able to communicate via bots or people through Messenger. In fact, people seem to like using Messenger over any other type of communication to businesses. Messenger 2.0 will allow AI and chat extensions to help your business be profitable on group chats. Customers can order food now, play music, and buy movie tickets without even leaving the group chat.  For small businesses, AI will help answer key questions by creating bots that will get information from your business site. Overall, Facebook is creating a smarter and more practical messenging platform for your business to use and get interaction from your clients.

• Michael Jacobsen is a Digital Marketing Expert from Toronto. For more information or questions that you may have about this blog or Digital Marketing, please contact Michael at michaelbjacobsen@yahoo.comor on Twitter @marketing_mbj. 

 

 

5 Ways The Future Of Facebook Marketing Will Change In 2017

By Michael Jacobsen (Digital Marketing Expert from Toronto, Canada)

Facebook’s F8 conference really set a new tone for what marketing on Facebook will look like in the next few years. With the rise of Augmentated Reality and Messenger 2.0, companies will need to change their social media marketing practices in new ways. Here are 5 of the ways that Facebook marketing will change in 2017.

5. Being Able To Create Shareable Effects

Facebook is following the way of Snapchat in which companies can now have people become part of the marketing experience. By interacting and engaging with filters, companies will need to be able to create these filters for people to use. Nike created one for runners and it was seen as a success. You will need to build effects that will help foster and create a community for your brand.

4.  Using Automated Insights from Facebook Analytics

Automated Insights is Facebook’s newest feature for seeing the analytics behind anything you use on Facebook. It will help you find trends and patterns within all of your Facebook marketing. This will be a very helpful tool and a game changer as it will make your analytics department have an easier time.

3. Having Customers’ Digital Spaces Within Your Physical Space

One of the cool things that Facebook mentioned was that friends could leave notes to other friends when they go visit another place. So let’s say I go to a restaurant and leave a note to you to try the fish tacos, when you go to that restaurant you will see that note. As a marketer you can jump on this by telling customers to create their own digital sphere within your space. As a business you will want to encourage this.

2.  Use Virtual Reality To Create A Reality

One of the cool things with Facebook Spaces is that it will put groups of Friends in fun interactive setting. Your business can totally profit on this opportunity. Let’s say your a hotel chain or a resort. Imagine having the option to show customers a virtual showroom of where they can stay or interact. VR has great marketing potential for any business.

1.  Use Messenger As Your #1 Channel For Customers

Business who use Messenger are starting to see a rise in customer engagement. Messenger has evolved now to be interactive and become a customer service. Messenger in the future will be a one stop shop for companies to sell to customers and answer any questions they have. Having a great Facebook Messenger setup will help your business grow. Messenger marketing will be a major focus point this year.

Overall, Facebook marketing will see these changes for this year and beyond. As Facebook moves beyond text and goes towards images, your marketing will need to change.

• Michael Jacobsen is a Digital Marketing Expert from Toronto. For more information or questions that you may have about this blog or Digital Marketing, please contact Michael at michaelbjacobsen@yahoo.comor on Twitter @marketing_mbj. 

 

Top 5 Ways To Climb Up The Search Results

By Michael Jacobsen (Digital Marketing expert from Toronto, Canada)

We all want our brands to be on top of Mount Google. We want it to be right up there so people see us and click. Brands understand the importance of getting to the top of the search results. Very few customers looks past the first 3 organic search results. Therefore, it is important that your brand understands how to set everything up so you can be at the top. Here are five simple SEO techniques that will help your company climb.

1. Think What Your Audience Is Going To Type

If you want to get your audience’s attention, you are going to need to think like them. Now you do not have to be a psychic to figure this out. All you need is look at Google’s keyword planner and see what people are searching for within your industry. From there, you should add in some of the most popular keywords into your site. Perhaps linking a few relevant ones into your metatags. Remember to relevant and not too spammy.

2. Don’t Get Framed and Java Trapped

Spiders, tech that indexes for search engines, hate Java and frames. If you are inserting Java into your site. Make sure you have an HTML sitemap somewhere so that the spiders can get there easily and index all the pages.

3. Get Your Business On The Site

Lots of search engines have business accounts that you can sign up for and get your business on the map. Many businesses ignore this. By having a Google My Business account, you can be seen on maps and have customers within that area see you quickly. Sign up is free.

4. Ask Clients To Give You Reviews

Reviews matter. You want to make sure that the content and your business is great. Search Engines love great businesses and can look at links going back to your site. Make sure you have those reviews linking back to your site.

5. Get Social

Tweeting and posting about your business and your links is gonna help with the overall shares and importance of your site which the algorithm likes. Make sure to support your site through your social channels.

• Michael Jacobsen is a Digital Marketing Expert from Toronto. For more information or questions that you may have about this blog or Digital Marketing, please contact Michael at michaelbjacobsen@yahoo.comor on Twitter @marketing_mbj. 

 

4 Sites To Give You Free Digital Marketing Knowledge

By Michael Jacobsen

Digital Marketing has tons of components to it. Amazingly enough there are many free courses online that can help on understand it all. Many of the world’s largest tech companies have free courses that teach people how to use their sites and how to market on them. Here are five of the best sites to enhance your digital marketing skills.

1. Creator Academy- YouTube

YouTube has one of the best video marketing courses in the world. You can learn anything. Want to learn about building your brand through YouTube? You can!! They have everything from VR to Analytics. You even get letters of completion. It’s fun and doesn’t take long.

2. Facebook BluePrint

Facebook marketing is huge. These courses also include Instagram marketing. From setting up campaigns to understanding analytics, BluePrint is a great site. There are free emodule certificates but you can pay to get Facebook marketing certified.

3. Google Online Marketing Challenge

There are many great pre-courses from this challenge that can really help you understand how to use Google for your business. This course is dense and has tons of great information. There are no certificates in this course but the video content helps the learning process.

4. Twitter Flight School

Time to fly. This amazing program gives you the ins and outs of Twitter marketing. It also certifies you and gives you a nice certificate and a badge to show and share.  Really insightful and gives really great case studies.

• Michael Jacobsen is a Digital Marketing Expert from Toronto. For more information or questions that you may have about this blog or Digital Marketing, please contact Michael at michaelbjacobsen@yahoo.comor on Twitter @marketing_mbj. 

Top 3 Tips On How To Market With A Cause

By Michael Jacobsen (Digital Marketing and Business Development Expert)

Welcome to 2017!! The new era of marketing with computers, influencers, and activist marketing.

Millenials trend towards products now that are less commercial and more environmentally friendly and fair trade. This new era of marketing wants to sell consumers the company’s kindness. A great example of this comes from World Wrestling Entertainment’s Stephanie Mcmahon who tweeted out “Philanthropy is the future of marketing”. 

You see businesses now promoting causes. Some are genuine and others are not. If your business wants to thrive in today’s age of marketing, you will need to play nice. You need to becareful though since an ungenuine attempt at a cause can hurt your business.Here are 3 tips on how to capitalize on a cause properly.

1. Know Your Audience

It makes sense that Dove would work with a lot of women’s charities and organizations. They sell products to women. You want your audience to be reflected in your choice of a cause. You don’t want to go to far off script and make your customers think where is this going.

2. Don’t Brag About It

Being sincere means being humble. You do not want to look like you are taking advantage of a charity. You also don’t want to plaster your name everywhere. Be fair about it and promote your work once in a while.

3. Don’t Overdo It

Don’t look like a brown noser. You want to pick a few that relate to you. Don’t pick every cause out there. Just pick a few that you think will connect well with your audience and your product.

• Michael Jacobsen is a Digital Marketing Expert from Toronto. For more information or questions that you may have about this blog or Digital Marketing, please contact Michael at michaelbjacobsen@yahoo.comor on Twitter @marketing_mbj. 

3 Simple Digital Media Business Ideas For 2017

By Michael Jacobsen (Digital Marketing and Business Development Expert)

Businesses are constantly changing. Technology is getting more and more complex and jobs are becoming less and less. Are you entrepeneurial but you don’t have an idea for a business?? Well, here are 3 simple business ideas that you can start.

Digital Media Event Coordinator

If you love tweeting about love, then this business may be for you to start. Tons of weddings have photographers and videographers to capture the special day, but what about the digital media side. This is a business that would cost very little to set up if you have a smart phone and a laptop. You could send them up with a templated website (wordpress site). Give them a url. Set up social media channels for their event and run it. You could develop content and help people stay connected. Event planning is a big business and digital media is on the rise.

360 Videographer

As Virtual Reality is on the rise, business will need to show their product off in a 360 form. This is where you can come in. With a purchase of a 360 camera and some video editing tools, you could promote yourself as being able to film in 360. This is great asset for hotels, resorts, musuems, or even real estate agents. This is a market where right now you have very little competition.

Content Hyper

If you love to write and have the ability to sell something, then perhaps this business might be for you. Content marketing and blogging are on the rise for businesses but they have very little time to run them. They also don’t see the point of hiring bloggers (older businesses don’t). You could become a content marketing agency. All you need to have is a computer. Promote yourself by saying you will promote their business online and write content for their blog.

Overall, these businesses right now have very little competition. They cost very little to startup and you could really be ahead of the trend. Capitalize on the now!!

• Michael Jacobsen is a Digital Marketing Expert from Toronto. For more information or questions that you may have about this blog or Digital Marketing, please contact Michael at michaelbjacobsen@yahoo.com or on Twitter @marketing_mbj. 

BEST VIRAL VIDEO TIPS (SOOOO HELPFUL) a.k.a 5 Ways Of Going Viral On YouTube

By Michael Jacobsen (Digital Marketing Expert)

Is your brand waiting to become an overnight sensation? Do you want to become like Justin Bieber? The chances of that are pretty slim but here are the top 5 tips to make a viral video.

1. Be Authentic

Authenticity is huge on YouTube. People like things that are amateurish and real. Most viral videos were filmed by someone that wasn’t a pro. These videos reflect on honest moment that amazed or made people laugh.

2. Use Your Thumb

The first thing people are going to see is your Thumbnail image that promotes your video.Pick a moment that is either funny or sexy to promote your videos. Remember this is what decides if you get a click or not.

3. Make It Look Like An Accident

You want to make your moment look like it wasn’t planned. Write a script but make it look authentic. Make sure your camera person is a bit shaky and laughs when something happens.

4. Logos At The End

You want to keep your branding to a minimal. Maybe put it at the end. Don’t put it in the title or the thumbnail.

5. Make Your Title Pop

Describe your video in a funny way. Like the blog title, you want it to be bold and attention grabbing. The more extreme sounding, the better.

• Michael Jacobsen is a Digital Marketing Expert from Toronto. For more information or questions that you may have about this blog or Digital Marketing, please contact Michael at michaelbjacobsen@yahoo.comor on Twitter @marketing_mbj. 

Top 5 Best Practices of Using Facebook Live

By Michael Jacobsen (Digital Marketing Expert from Toronto)

Facebook Live is now one of the hottest new ways for businesses, celebrities and people to reach out to their audiences and get opinions in a real time environment. It is a fun and exciting way for businesses to interact with their customers. There are though many ways that business can be hurt from going live and can set themeselves up for some awkward situations. Here are the top 5 best practices for using Facebook Live.

1.Schedule and promote your event

This is a really important first step. So many people just feel like logging in and using it at that moment. This could lead to a lack of views and not much engagement. If you mention on your Facebook wall the day before that you are having a Facebook live session, then you will get more people wanting to participate and also prepared. If it is a Q and A session, then perhaps in the promoted post to have a line asking people for early questions for the Facebook Live tomorrow.

2. Have a purpose for it

Don’t just log in and just hope the conversation comes to you. Have a purpose of going live. Think about what format you want it in and what are you trying to promote. Prepare formats like Q and A or maybe just a showcase of your product with a little bit of interaction. Either way make sure you are going live for a reason and not because your company wants to try it out.

3. Be interactive 

Remember Facebook Live is a two way street. People log in because they want to interact with you. Asking questions to your customers as well as reading their comments out loud and thanking them is really good for building that interaction. Not every comment has to be read. Try to skim over the negative ones. If majority are negative then just drop the convo and interact with your surroundings. Have fun and don’t be afraid to communicate with your audience.

4. Use a moderator if you have a Special Guest

Nothing can be more awkward than a celebrity being asked an unedited , unfiltered question. If you are having any one that is considered a special guest, it is best to pick and choose the comments yourself as well as not letting the special guest being able to see the live comments coming in. You can either get your camera person to do it or even yourself.

5. Write a script

This really comes down to being prepared. Consider it to be like a live tv show. Have content prepared. Have segments and topics to cover. So many people come into Facebook live expecting the audience to carry the show but in reality you do. Make sure you are prepared and that you have talking points to cover. No one wants to watch you blunder around looking for something to talk about.

• Michael Jacobsen is a Digital Marketing Expert from Toronto. For more information or questions that you may have about this blog or Digital Marketing, please contact Michael at michaelbjacobsen@yahoo.com or on Twitter @marketing_mbj.