JUMP START Blog and Online Community

Imagine you’re opening a new soda shop, and you want to promote your signature ice cream floats. In order to get word out, you must engage your audience, and social media is the most obvious way to do it. So, you take to Twitter and ask your followers whether they prefer coke floats or root beer floats. Now, imagine that every time users choose coke or root beer, they spread the tweet to their followers, who also engage with your brand. Within a matter of minutes, you can have hundreds of tweets cheering for one flavor over the other, thus creating excitement and brand interest among hundreds of new potential customers.   

The name for this exciting phenomenon is "Twitter Conversational Ads" and "Instant Unlock Cards", and they are very real (no imagination required). They create direct business-to-consumer contact that promotes ad interaction and social sharing. Their primary selling point is obviously their ability to go viral quickly, which is something that marketers have been chasing for years.

These Twitter ads allow for direct interaction and engagement in two ways.

Leading a marketing team is a big job. You have to define and communicate a marketing strategy, know how and when to give constructive feedback, and deliver it in a positive manner without disrupting team morale and productivity.

Here are some tips that will help you provide feedback clearly, concisely and respectfully:

• Be clear and concise – Address your team with a clear message, and get straight to the point. Explain why you’re bringing a particular issue to their attention so that they can better understand where you’re coming from and be more motivated to actively change for the better. 
• Set emotions aside – No matter what, always separate your emotions so that you can address your team in a calm, collective manner. If you go into a conversation angry or frustrated you’re only going to leave them in a defensive state causing miscommunication, unresponsive action and shut-down. 

Facebook is in the process of rolling out new design changes for business pages.  So, the question on every marketer’s mind - what’s going to change? Let’s take a look at some of these layout changes that you and your business can prepare for and make sure that you’re ready for Facebook’s new age:

Around this time last year, the Hubspot team shared a blog post that addressed 3 of the most common fears that business owners face when they think about implementing and executing an inbound marketing strategy. One of those fears, of course, had to do with "giving away the farm". Does this fear still plague marketing managers and business owners today? 

Find out what you've missed in the world of content marketing for the week ending September 23, 2016. These are a few of this week's top stories, hand-picked by the team at Flair Interactive Services.

Find out what you've missed in the world of content marketing for the week ending September 16, 2016. These are a few of this week's top stories, hand-picked by the team at Flair Interactive Services.

Find out what you've missed in the world of content marketing for the week ending September 9, 2016. These are a few of this week's top stories, hand-picked by the team at Flair Interactive Services.

The marketing industry is headed in an exciting direction. As technologies become more efficient and creative strategies become more essential to the success of a business, those who are already tracking current marketing trends will be well prepared for what’s to come. 

It has become standard practice for content creation and distribution to be fully integrated into everyday operations of most businesses. As more focus is placed on the consumer, businesses are developing entirely new strategies dedicated to gaining insight into (and satisfying) their wants and needs.

Though no one can say for certain what’s to come, it seems the digital age of marketing may set new standards throughout the industry with more outlets for distribution and engagement than ever before. Here are a few marketing trends that we’re looking forward to:

Let’s face it – it’s 2016, and more likely than not you’ve heard of Snapchat. Though it’s been around since 2011, only in recent years has Snapchat caught the attention of mobile users, with many businesses only just starting to jump on the bandwagon as a means to tap into this social network’s massive marketing potential. Before you can harness the reach of this latest social experiment, you need to know how it works.  

Let’s take a look and answer some of app’s most basic questions:  

Find out what you've missed in the world of content marketing for the week ending August 26, 2016. These are a few of this week's top stories, hand-picked by the team at Flair Interactive Services.