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My Favorite Online Marketing Tools: Buffer.com

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bufferappIf you are looking for a way to manage multiple social media profiles, Buffer is a great choice. I have been using Buffer for several years, and I find it very useful. It allows me to create a bunch of posts at once, controlling the social profiles that publish them, including at what time they are published.

I am currently managing my Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin pages. Currently, Buffer supports the following social platforms:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Google+
  • Pinterest
  • Instragram

Scheduling your posts at certain times and on certain days can maximize how many people see what you publish. In addition, Buffer’s scheduling feature makes certain that your business is publishing updates regularly and consistently. Buffer also allows you to publish the same content across multiple platforms at once, including photos and videos. Currently, three million people and businesses utilize Buffer.

Buffer Analytics

I only use the free analytics option, but not in any scientific way–just a glance. I measure all my social media engagement and conversions with the different social platforms and Google Analytics.

Pablo

Buffer recently introduced a new tool: the Pablo image center. This tool makes it easy to create custom images that promote your brand and to alter those images as needed to post to different social media sites. This is a great way to create interesting, visually pleasing, and highly shareable content.

If you are in the online marketing industry, Buffer may make things much easier, both when it comes to posting and when it comes to analyzing your social media data. In addition,  you should also check out the following tools, which can be used in conjunction with Buffer to do some very powerful things:

Event Marketing At Hershey Park

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Over Memorial Day weekend in 2014, my wife and I went to the Zac Brown Band concert at Hershey Park in Pennsylvania with a few friends. Hershey is a beautiful town, the show was in a lovely venue, and the crowd was a great mix of the American populous. When I walked around and did a bit of people watching, I soon realized that the crowd was a good mix of many diverse groups that could be marketed to at the show without coming off to intrusive:

  • Farmers
  • Yuppie
  • Rednecks
  • Typical Middle-Class Family
  • Blue Collar Worker
  • Pop Music Fan
  • meat heads
  • intellectuals
  • People living within a 50-mile radius of Hershey PA.
  • Etc.

As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about marketing, I was interested to see how the venue took advantage of its opportunity to reach out (and profit).

Photos of the Venue

Below are some photos I took of the venue and its advertising opportunities while at the event.  If you are looking for a sales job with big upside, I suggest reaching out to Hershey HR department and pitching a manager.

Here are just a few marketing and advertising ideas I had while enjoying the show:

One of the things that felt odd about the day was the lack of government sponsorship.  This was Memorial Day weekend one of the few times during the year when the public thinks about their government and what it means to be a citizen. This could have been used as a time to ask the citizens to sign up for public service or register to vote. During the downtime between acts, they could have had representatives from State organizations such as the State Parks Department or National Guard speak/educate the public of their needs or services. There were many missed opportunities that would have added to the value of the event and that would have benefited the venue.

Overall, I had a great time and left feeling very positive toward the bands that played and the Hershey brand. I would recommend this venue to anyone and will be back again. But I do recommend that Hershey’s marketing and sales departments consider opening up more ad space. There’s a good amount of money to be made, and people are used to ads in these types of spaces.  I know most people would say they prefer not to be advertised to at an event that they paid to attend, but I don’t think selling the space that I address above would be overbearing.

Being a successful marketer means looking for advertising opportunities wherever you go, understanding who you are marketing to, and thinking outside of the box. You can learn a lot about advertising, even on your days off.

What We Can Learn From On The Media

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OTM_logo_stacked_RGBI have been listening to On The Media for at least ten years now. If you are new to the media industry or an experienced expert, this show has something to offer you.

In case you’re not familiar with the show, here’s the lowdown from Wikipedia:

“On the Media (OTM) is an hour-long weekly radio program, hosted by Bob Garfield and Brooke Gladstone, covering journalism, technology, and First Amendment issues. It is produced by WNYC in New York City. OTM is broadcast Saturday mornings in New York City (with a repeat on Sunday afternoon) and syndicated nationwide through National Public Radio and other public radio outlets. The program is available by audio stream, MP3 download, and podcast. “

The show offers a great mix of law, media, and politics. I started listening to the program on NPR while driving in the car and eventually discovered the podcast. I find the show useful in dissecting what is currently getting the media’s attention and why. What and why a story gets coverage is often more important than how it is covered. I also really like the way they give a historical perspective to ownership and past behavior of media outlets.

As a professional marketer, it is important to understand the channels and brands you advertise on and what their goals are.  This should affect not only your ad placement and timing but also your ad copy and imagery.

This might sound a bit cheesy, but I believe understanding how the media works and who influences it is one of the most important duties of a country’s citizens. While it is also important to my work, it is also generally important to stay informed about our media, how it works, and who is sending us messages.

“Almost three out of four U.S. adults (71%) watch local television news, according to Nielsen data from February 2013.”

If you want to see which companies control the local news media click here. In the past, most of the local news was owned by a local wealthy individual or institution this has changed dramatically over the last 20 years. Powerful corporations now control a significant portion of the local news channels. It is time that we the people demand more from our Fourth Estate or at least understand who is influencing what we see each day and why they are doing it.

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