YouTube Finally Makes Some Videos ‘Shoppable’

Google is beginning to roll out a new functionality on a limited basis: the ability for brands to make products ‘shoppable’ in YouTube videos. Currently only Unilever*, a Google client, has the feature and is using it for their Tresemmé brand. With this update, viewers can click on the products which will lead to details and several retailers to purchase from. Google does not take a cut from the sales pushed from this feature, and the functionality is not available on embedded videos.

Lowe’s Embraces Six-Second Vine Videos for Spring Campaign

A number of brands have capitalized on the launch of Vine, unveiling movie previews and product teasers in tandem with more traditional advertisements. Lowes’ spring campaign, however, may have unlocked the key to making the platform truly useful for its consumers. The retailer recently released a dozen videos that offer simple home improvement tips, including how to remove stripped screws and rust from knives. Vine provides an easily digestible and sharable vehicle for this campaign.

Updated Google Maps

Google recently unveiled a new, more visually interactive look for Google Maps. Search results now highlight businesses in the area reviewed by friends, along with the most popular businesses, and users can click on a location to pull up an “info card” with more details. In addition to these changes, Maps now learns users’ preferences as they search for places, save locations and write reviews, and makes recommendations tailored to these preferences. Ultimately, these updates make the local search experience increasingly personalized.

Alt-J to Premiere New Mobile Footage App at London Gig

On Thursday, the band Alt-J introduced an innovative mobile app with the likely intent of discouraging concert attendees from recording shows on their phones. The app, named Soundhalo, allows users to download MP4 videos and songs to their mobiles shortly after they are performed live. Soundhalo is currently available only on Android devices, but it is expected that an iOS version will be rolled out over the upcoming months.

Google+ Completely Redesigned, Now Automatically Enhances Photos and Highlights Your Best Shots

Google+ has released a new layout redesign, making the platform more user-friendly and interactive. A main focus of the redesign includes hashtags, and Google+ will now automatically scan user updates to add relevant links and auto-tag uploaded photos. Another key new feature is “Auto Enhance,” a suite of photo features that will automatically analyze and apply tweaks to uploaded photos – adjusting brightness, noise reduction, saturation, color correction and more.

Image credit: Amy The Nurse

*Unilever is an Edelman client.

For television networks, trying to attract a Millennial audience is not a surprising move. The Millennial generation, defined as those between the ages of 18 and 33, is now the largest on the planet. But launching new TV channels to reach them may seem counter-intuitive. Some studies say that television is a dying medium as habits shift to newer forms of entertainment, such as social media or YouTube. But the fact is that Millennials are still watching television in great numbers. According to Pew Research, nearly six in 10 Millennials watch at least one hour of television every day. The real shift is HOW they consume television. A 2013 eMarketer study found that 106 million Americans, or one in three Americans, watched TV online. That number is expected to grow to 145 million in the next four years and the trend is led by those ages 18-34. In 2010 a survey of college freshman found 87 percent said they prefer watching TV and movies online rather than subscribing to a cable or satellite dish service. Some television networks realize this shift and are evolving to better engage them.

This Fall, two new television channels will launch that target the Millennial generation. The first new channel, called Pivot, will feature “entertainment that inspires social change” and will include a broad range of shows from comedies to documentaries. Pivot also acquired the highly acclaimed series “Friday Night Lights.” The second new TV channel is called FXX, and is a spin-off from the FX network. The FXX channel will include a mix of re-runs, including shows like “Parks and Recreation,” and also include new original content, focusing on comedies, including “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” which will move over from the FX channel.

What both new channels have in common is that they are built in a way that acknowledges how Millennials want to view television – online and on-the-go. Both channels will features their shows as a traditional television channel, but their focus will be on content viewable online and offering an app that allows for live-stream or on-demand content via smartphones and tablets.

These two channels are reacting to a new reality in entertainment. Passive television viewing is a thing of the past for the newer generations. Millennials want to view their favorite shows on their mobile devices, and they are using several types of media at the same time to interact with the content they view. The challenge for marketers today is to create content they want to view, but equally important is to make it viewable in the right places and to make it interactive. These two new TV channels represent what most television will look like in the not-too-distant future.

Alex Abraham is a senior vice president at Edelman and the director of the 8095® Millennial Insights Group. Follow him on Twitter @alexbabraham.

Name: Kyle Brown

Image credit: detsang

Multi-Social Network Adventure Primes Pistol Annies Fans For New Album

Leading up to the release of their upcoming album, country trio Pistol Annies led fans through a month-long, multi-platform interactive social experience. “The Great Annies Adventure” campaign began with a digital comic book, in which a rival band stole the women’s concert gear, music and merchandise. Fans then followed clues across social channels to reveal prizes such as fan gear and tickets. Ultimately, the band’s site garnered 20% repeat viewership, with an average of two minutes and 48 seconds per visit.

YouTube to Launch Subscription Plan for Some Channels

In an effort to raise revenue from sources other than advertising and generate videos with higher production value, YouTube will begin charging users about $2 per month to access premium content. Though YouTube is recognized for user generated content, videos on the platform have become increasingly refined by professional producers over the years. This update is important for brands to consider when developing their YouTube strategy as more users turn to online video over television.

Facebook Testing User-Added Emoticons in Status Updates

Facebook is rolling out support for emoji on desktop and mobile. Emoji emoticons were previously only available for Facebook Messenger, but now users will be able to use them in check-ins, status updates, photo captions and more. This feature appears to be geared towards gaining favorability with users in Japan, where emoji was originally developed because of its history with pictorial communication. After usage increased by more than 200% last year, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg called Japan “a really important market” and confirmed that Facebook would increase emphasis on the country.

You Probably Noticed that LinkedIn Looks a Little Different Today
This week LinkedIn Today, the section of the professional networking site that aggregates original content from contributors, received a major redesign that allows users to subscribe to new “Channels” focusing on specific topics. The update lives under the “News” tab on LinkedIn’s homepage and uses both an automated algorithm and human editors to show users stories that they’re likely to be interested in.

Growing ‘App’etite for Mobile Health

How many times have you tried to look up health symptoms or attempted to self-diagnose yourself via your smartphone? There are an estimated 40K mobile health apps that provide access are changing how users control their personal health information. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is stepping in to finalize regulatory guidelines that will have a significant impact on mobile health apps moving forward.

LinkedIn is an Edelman client.

Image credit: zoomar

The importance of visual elements in social media is a new constant in order to grab a user’s attention, but how we engage with our ears is just being discovered.  The launch of mobile apps such as Twitter #Music and musicians themselves embracing social media, presents a new role music can play on social media that goes beyond purely listening.

Twitter #Music leverages the most popular tracks users are sharing across Twitter, via apps such as Spotify, and making them more discoverable. Twitter’s focus on the listening aspect, by making the song discoveries available for instant listening, provides an avenue for brands to build upon the other aspect of music, which is a deeper connection with the overall music experience.

Pinterest

When Alicia Keys arrived to the world of Pinterest, she focused on the platform’s inherent ability to inspire. She created individual boards for all of her songs that visually described the meaning behind the song. While this form of engagement creates a more intimate connection with an artist, the aspect of music itself has carved a place for itself on Pinterest.  Through quotes of song lyrics, YouTube links, and even images that remind users of their youth, a brand that can connect the overall feeling music creates with their message is one that will build advocates and not just followers.

Google +

Google+ Hangouts bring together friends and families regardless of where they are. However, from a brand perspective, it can bring individuals into your living room that you would never have had the opportunity to meet. ModCloth recently partnered with Neyla of The Lumineers to host a Google+ Hangout discussing music festival fashion. As a result, ModCloth leveraged a musical influencer to extend their point of view in the world of fashion and social media.

Instagram

Similar to how music can capture the simple moments an individual is feeling, Instagram captures the simple moments in people’s lives. Artists have already caught wind of this trend and have started to use Instagram to promote album releases. The band Dawes recently released a new album with a song titled “From a Window Seat” and created a full site to capture user generated images of an individual’s view from a window seat. Rather than pushing their own message in promotion of the song, they encouraged users to share their own stories, resulting in a more unique and diverse experience of the community.  Brands can follow suit on this trend by thinking less about how they want to tell their story, and placing more focus on how their fans are telling and living it.

How else can brands use music and social media to share their stories?

Image credit: lambdachialpha

China’s 12^th National People’s Congress (NPC) officially came to a close on March 17th, marking the end of a long transition of power that had first started in October with the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

While the NPC captured media headlines in China and around the world, it also played out in a significant way on social media.

Just hours after the newly-elected Premier Li Keqiang delivered his first press conference, “Meet China’s New Premier” became a top trending topic on Weibo – China’s popular microblogging website (considered a hybrid of Twitter and Facebook). 14,000 ‘tweets’ on Weibo were directly related to the press conference, with almost half tweeted during the week leading up to it and another half posted within the first 24 hours afterwards.

Meanwhile, the topic of China’s “Two Sessions” (the common name for the two week-long political meetings) ranked 19^th out of 100 top topics for the week, with nearly 5.3 million comments tweeted or re-tweeted during the week leading up to the NPC.

China’s online landscape has long been one of the fastest-growing in the world, with more than 564 million internet users, 309 million microblog (Weibo) users and 420 million mobile web users.

In the context of China’s population, this means nearly half of all Chinese citizens (42 percent) are going online for something, and nearly 55 percent of these “netizens” are actively using microblog sites like Weibo.

Weibo has since become one of the richest sources of public discussion around current events, breaking news and top trends – basically, anything from crazy cat videos to critiques of China’s environmental policies.

The power of social media is not lost on China’s government – not only has it gotten more involved in monitoring online activity (Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have all been blocked since 2009), it has increasingly taken to Weibo, with an estimated 60,000 government-related Weibo accounts contributing to Weibo’s daily average of 86 million posts.

China’s authoritative State Council recently launched its first Weibo account to announce new rules and regulations, and currently has more than one million followers – though it does not interact with fans or allow questions and comments.

Perhaps the most interesting new Weibo accounts have come in the form of “fan” sites dedicated to China’s leading politicians: the “Learning from Xi Fan Club” (学习粉丝团) was created just days into Xi Jinping’s role as CPC General Secretary and is dedicated to tracking Xi’s public appearances, racking up more than 1.3 million fans to-date.

Meanwhile, an account devoted to Chinese First Lady Peng Liyuan, the “Guo Mu (‘national mother’) Fan Club,” recently reached almost 6,000 followers before being mysteriously shut down at the end of March.

So what does this tell us? As an increasingly engaged generation of Chinese citizens continues to move between online and offline sources, it’s clear the government must find new ways to maintain its relevance and to participate in the conversation.

And while we might not see Xi Jinping engaging in a Reddit Ask Me Anything (a la Obama) any time soon, it’s safe to say China’s government will not ignore the power of social media platforms like Weibo.

I predict the government will increase its online engagement and monitoring (censorship) even more as China’s new leaders promote their “China Dream” strategy. And if we’re lucky, we may even see a few more fan sites pop up?

Marissa Bushe is a Global Fellow for Edelman in Beijing, China, and is in her third year with Edelman. You can also follow her on Twitter: @Mbushe

Name: Andrew F. Stewart            

Image credit: ilikerender

NBC’s “The Voice” is Changing How We Watch TV… With Twitter

Since the first season launched in 2011, NBC’s The Voice has turned heads for its creative and strategic use of Twitter. The popular reality singing competition has become a leader in the entertainment industry for using the social platform to create buzz, generate iTunes sales and drive engagement during actual airings of the show. Not only are the coaches themselves live tweeting during the program, but the network also encourages viewers to engage with the show’s participants by displaying on-screen hashtags for viewers to use in their tweets. In this study, Simply Measured analyzes the success The Voice has seen this season in terms of generating “Second Screen Engagement”, a trend that has become increasingly important for entertainment brands.

Snickers Buys Search Ads against Your Hunger-Induced Misspellings

Through the power of Google, Snickers recently launched an SEO campaign targeting users who misspelled search words. Assuming most 9-5 employees couldn’t see the brand’s social content due to office IT restrictions, the company purchased 25,000 misspelled search terms. Whenever a user entered one of the keywords, the top results would include a paid search ad that directed them to youcantspellwhenyourehungry.com, a site urging visitors to grab to a Snickers bar. Ultimately, the campaign reached nearly 500,000 people in the target demo through this strategy.

LinkedIn Now Lets You Add a Visual Portfolio to Your Profile

Photos, presentations and videos can all now be added to your LinkedIn* profile. Called the LinkedIn Professional Portfolio, this functionality turns word-centric resumes into potentially image-driven portfolios, allowing users to upload any number of images, videos and presentations directly into their summary, work experience and education sections. These visuals show up as thumbnails on profile pages, directly beneath specific jobs, work summaries or education histories. So far, the LinkedIn Professional Portfolio has only been rolled out to English-speaking countries.

Instagram Adds People-Tagging to Photos

Instagram has recently added photo tagging to its iOS and Android apps, allowing users to tag friends in photos and browse feeds of photos in which their friends appear. When someone tags an Instagram user in a photo, the user will receive a notification and the photo will appear in the “Photos of You” section, similar to Facebook’s photo tag functionality. Through this new rollout, brands have the opportunity to curate and share photos related to their business.

Turning Pins to Profits: Tips for Using Pinterest for eCommerce

Have you ever been interested in the possibility of turning pins to profits? Check out a handful of tips on how to make your brand’s Pinterest page pop, including the use of SEO-friendly keywords, vertical images to increase the “scroll-life” of a pin, and more.

*LinkedIn is an Edelman client.

Image credit: topher76