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The GoPro. Most people have heard of it - the "World's Most Versatile Camera", the all sport, all conditions camera. practically indestructible, waterproof, and creates epic videos and some extraordinary photos. And most people have heard of it through the company's exceptional online marketing. Understanding what makes GoPro's campaign successful, and the lessons it has for other companies are bountiful. GoPro has five main web pages, a Facebook page, a Twitter account, an Instagram, YouTube page, and an official website. The company, which has been around since 2002, has only really launched into the public eye in the past three or four years. And that doesn't happen by chance. Their Facebook page was created in early 2009, and since then they've gathered almost 5 million likes on their page, gaining a million every four to six months since mid 2011. Their twitter page, which has been around since at least June 2012 (though it is hard to de...

Just Do It vs. Impossible is Nothing.  Nike and Adidas, both world renowned athletic brands, incredibly successful and mindful of their use of social media.  Their Facebook presence is incredible, together gathering well over 70 million likes on their pages.  These titans use a variety of methods, similar in some ways and differentiated in others which have led them both to successful marketing campaigns on Facebook. One of the most important things to note about both of these companies strategies is the ability to localize, or target, specific audiences through different pages.  Both Nike and Adidas have pages dedicated to specific shoes, such as the Air Force 1 or the Adidas F50, and have pages dedicated to specific sports ranging from soccer to baseball to cricket.  One distinction that is highly noticeable is that there are Nike pages designed specifically for certain countries, including Nike India and Nike Spain.  While these pages are we...

As captain of the UC San Diego Sailing Team I have sought to improve the visibility of the team and deepen our roots to the San Deigo community.  One device that we have used to accomplish that goal is social media. Our team produced a Facebook page in late October of 2012 and updated it semi-regularly getting team members and recent alumni to "like" the page, reaching about 50 likes.  Since then the posts have grown more consistant and contained more engaging and relevant information for people to respond to, attempting to build on personalization and two-way communication that social media allows for.  Through encouraging the team to outreach to close friends and family we have well over 100 likes and climbing.  This number is now rising due to viral spread of information; When people like and comment on our content their friends see it posted in their newsfeed and in turn like our page to learn more. In these short 5 months the page has launched ...

The Qualitative Research Consultants Association's Susan Saurage-Altenloh, and American Marketing Association's Expert Contributor, Jennifer Bunner, write about the in's and out's of current marketing platforms and how to avoid mistakes in digital space. In the QRCA's article, the first four of the top ten trends in marketing for 2013 can be seen to revolve around social media marketing, which just happens to be the number one trend right now.  The next three, mobile marketing, introducing interactive formats, and technology-enabled researchers, all suggest a marketing world centered around the web.  With recent connections between people's online lives and their mobile lives with the expansion of the Iphone and other smartphones, social media can only be seen as having more potential as sites like Facebook and Twitter become embedded in these devices.  As discussed in previous posts, social media's interactive feature is exactly what makes it a special...

Now that we've covered the basics, how does one target audiences.  If one has a diverse following, how do they ensure that all audiences are appropriately addressed, without fragmenting the population or feeding their followers unnecessary information?  Ryan Rudd in his article,   Three Models for Leveraging Local in an Enterprise Social Media Strategy , speaks to strategies on how to avoid these problems. The first model Rudd brings up is Geo-Targeting.  This tool provided by Facebook, enables someone posting on a page to localize who sees the post.  The poster can limit who sees the post based on either language or country.  Targeting your Asian followers?  Simply limit language to Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, or whatever other languages you care to add.  Additionally you can limit viewership of the post to those countries. You can even do both if you're trying to strictly target a certain audience.  Doing th...

Where we left off leaves one with great insights as to the importance of understanding the large quantities of information there is available through social media.  Likes, comments, and shares are just part of the information available.  The SAS's article,  Social Media Metrics , further explores the information available, and what can and should be done with that data. The white paper outlines 3 essential tools to use to gather relevant information about the engagement your social media is creating.  First are descriptive statistics, generally accessible on the page you are using, this data includes number of page likes, followers, and what channels generate more activity.  Next is social network analysis.  This involves following the links posted by your followers, seeing where your content is being shared, and seeing what stirs up conversation among followers.  This helps to identify sources and levels of influence in your media. ...

The UCSD Sailing Team uses a lot of social media to connect with its followers.  It has two Facebook groups, a Facebook page, email account, Google group, school run website, and two Twitter accounts.  These various avenues off different opportunities and provide different information about how effective its outreach is. A few of these mediums are used more for communication than for promotion.  For example, the team has a private Facebook group which is used to organize practices and meetings.  However, it is also used to organize promotion.  The team uses the other Facebook group and the Google group for its alumni, updating them on the team's results, how they can help give back, and about alumni related events.  This can be seen as localizing some of our content to those who have a more intimate relationship with the team.  Further the team email account is used for professional communication and as a long term address that people can use t...

Creating and updating your social media is only half the battle.  The other half is utilizing data available to measure, understand and predict the impact of social media on a business.  This is what is explored in the article  Social Media Metrics  by the SAS institute, a leader in business analytic software and service, and an independent business intelligence marketer. Measuring success on social media in undoubtedly difficult.  There is not necessarily a direct return on investment or even a necessary correlation between activity and returns.  Hits or page views is a meaningless view of success unless it correlates with increased sales, reduced costs, or a change in strategy.  More important however, is engagement.  A viewer of content that shows life on the page either through a comment, like, share, "re tweet", or any other mode of interaction with the content is what is worth the most.   Of cou...

The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as follows: "Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action." Or "the art of communicating with your customers and prospects without selling." Brian Davis, a content marketer at Movéo Integrated Branding discusses five laws of content and what they should mean to a brand. The first law Davis outlines is the law of consumption.  He states that "As the rate of content consumption increases, the value of fresh content increases."  As people get more and more involved in viewing updated, relevant information, it becomes more and more valuable.  Ever check a website that has been updating daily for the past 6 months that takes a week off?  The desire for new content is overwhelming, despite the real va...

In the article  The Secret to Viral Success , Marguerite McNeal explores what causes viewers of online videos to share clips on social networks. The short answer: Emotional Connection.  Content or videos that move individuals lead them with the desire to be the source of this idea for others.  This is equated with the desire to share stories; One hopes to create emotional familiarity and community based on shared experience.  Research into what emotions are likely to lead to video sharing.  Given 16 possible responses based on a specific emotional response, whether it was positive or negative, and whether it was a strong or weak emotion.  They found that regardless of the video evoking positive or negative emotion that if the video was able to provoke a high arousal, it was more likely to be shared.  That being said, positive videos produced more shares than negative ones.  Of further interest is that the videos that were positive and evoked...

Okay, maybe more like  an  indie marketing plan than  the  plan, since every game and every company comes with its own approach to marketing. Nevertheless, at  Ronimo  we have gathered a ton of experience with marketing through  Awesomenauts  and  Swords & Soldiers , and I have also done quite a bit of marketing for my hobby project  Proun . Today, I would like to share this knowledge in the form of a rather complete plan that other indies hopefully find useful to help guide their marketing. Traditionally marketing is the field of the large companies and the large budgets, who buy advertisement space on television, magazines and websites. However, today a small indie studio with hardly any marketing budget can still get a lot of attention going. In fact, I think indie studios can potentially market downloadable games better than big companies! When we launched Swords & Soldiers, we were a pretty much unknown company with no ma...