FeedMagnet

Social media for marketing?

There are a lot of tools out there for monitoring social media or responding to tweets and commenting on photos/videos. Marketers spend a lot of time thinking about how to measure social media and how to do damage control for negative posts - but not a lot of people are thinking about how to tap in to the stream of social media content for marketing.

With as much chatter as there is floating around on social media sites, there are plenty of people saying both positive and negative things about most brands and products - and unless you have a completely terrible product, there are usually quite a few positive mentions buried in there. Better than a "customer testimonial" - positive mentions in a social media channel are unsolicited, unedited, real comments from real people. Your customers trust real people. There is a lot of value in showcasing this content. And it already exists - you just need to get at it. FeedMagnet can help.

FeedMagnet can also help you aggregate everything your employees are saying on the social web. Have a lot of team members blogging, tweeting, or posting photos and video? Pull it all together in one place (filtered of course, so you don't get their tweets about partying on Friday night) and showcase it on your website.

The point is, there are a ton of ways to use social media for marketing - and FeedMagnet is the perfect tool to help you do just that. We've highlighted a few of the most common ways to put FeedMagnet to use below:

On the company website

• E-commerce: Showing updates of people enjoying your product right on the conversion page, to encourage others to buy and increase conversion rates
• Branding: Showing updates from happy customers to positively reenforce the perception of your brand using real testimonials from peers
• Corporate social aggregation: Pulling all the tweets, photos, videos, and other content generated by a company and its leadership team into one place to show what the company has been up to in the social media space. This is essentially a corporate version of "lifestreaming" - like a corporate version of FriendFeed.com, but on your own website.
• Social press room: Similar to corporate social aggregation, but also including press releases pulled in via RSS and press coverage pulled in from Google News. Content could be pre-moderated so that only the items the PR group wants on the page show up.

As a stand-alone microsite

• Social media hub: Pull in content from across the Web on topic related to a company's core business. Have the company sponsoring the site select content experts from their ranks to participate openly and be featured on the site, responding to other posts and proving an expert voice from the company. Show that the company is listening and is a part of the conversation going on in social channels. The site could also include editorial pieces pulled in via RSS and could be re-configured for each major ad campaign to serve as a social media call-to-action. This approach is similar to what many companies like Dell have done in creating their own social networks (IdeaStorm), but instead of creating a new social network and asking people to come to you, you pull in content that already exists. This is a less risky approach since people are already participating - you don't have to entice them to come to your site - instead, you just provide a branded environment to showcase your participation in the dialog.
• Viral landing pages: Set up content streams to pull in updates for trending topics and include a call-to-action or strong branding for a company or product. The hope here is that the link to your page is spread virally due to the real-time, relevant content - resulting in thousands of free "clicks" to your landing page.

For newspapers and media companies

• A feed for every story: Set up a filtered feed to go alongside every news story, showing real-time commentary and reactions from readers and the general public
• Local community hub: Unique feeds for local topics showing a live-stream from the local community. For example, Austin could have a tourism stream, streams for each conference that comes to town, for major events/concerts, for Austin live music in general, etc. Can be built as a stand-alone site, or incorporated into an existing community site like Austin360.com

In advertising

• Social rich media ads: Can showcase live or near-live (pre-moderated) updates via Twitter and other social sources. This has a similar effect as the Trident ad, but in a banner ad with the social posts being from "43 minutes ago" or "2 hours ago". Just set up a filtered feed looking for customers talking about your product in a positive light and then have someone check the moderation queue every couple hours to approve a new batch of updates that are pulled in to the banner. The rich media ad just has to be flighted once, but the content can be updated as often as every few minutes.

Offline

• Conferences: Pulling in live photos, tweets, and videos of conference attendees to be displayed on flatscreen TVs in the conference center lobby and on screen while attendees are filing in to the key note sessions. The same feed can also be displayed on the conference website or distributed as an iPhone app for attendees (and those who could not attend) to follow along when not at the convention center.
• Fan Participation: For at sporting events (football, basketball, NASCAR, etc.), concerts, or any other event that takes place in a big arena. Pull in photos, videos, and text content live from even attendees and broadcast on to jumbotrons and/or large screen TVs out in the concession area. A team of moderators can review each update before pushing live to the screens, or everything can be automated with a set of filters.

How will you use it?

This list is just a start - we think the applications of FeedMagnet are fairly limitless. We're interested in your feedback - and if you have any other ideas that you want to discuss, send us a note - or reach out to us in our GetSatisfaction forum.