By Kirsten Stubbs

Like eco-friendly light bulbs and stocking up on economy sized packages of paper towels at Costco, even before social media can make you money, they can inherently save you money. And when it comes to market research, social surveying can save brands time and money with significant and valid results from a substantial sample size to help better serve customers.

Such is the case for DoubleTree by Hilton, the socially savvy hotel chain known for its comprehensive social media training at each of its 250 international properties as well as last year’s social-centric nationwide Cookie CAREavan Tour. The brand is now using social media to identify how it can improve travel for guests and continue to deliver the DoubleTree by Hilton brand promises. Additionally, the brand is using this unique method to engage and further enhance their online community.

In support of DoubleTree by Hilton’s slogan “The little things mean everything,” the brand is asking guests to answer a few simple questions on a Facebook tab for the chance to win a tin of their signature chocolate chip cookies. The instant feedback allows DoubleTree by Hilton to get a true sense of how their community defines and experiences travel. The tab is being marketed via promoted tweets and Facebook ads to create a comprehensive campaign bridging all of the brand’s social media platforms in a way that benefits both brand and guest.

The mix of valuable feedback for the brand and a sweet prize for guests, as well as heightened awareness of both, is resulting in exponential growth in DoubleTree by Hilton’s online community. In ten days following the campaign’s start, the brand’s Facebook likes have grown more than 30 percent, Twitter followers have grown more than 15 percent and their weekly ‘People Talking About This’ metric (the brand’s Facebook engagement) has increased by more than 427 percent, now encompassing a staggering 14 percent of their total Facebook fan base.

To hear more about DoubleTree by Hilton’s “Little Things” initiative, follow along with the conversation on Twitter by searching #LittleThings or read the recent HubSpot article featuring the campaign, or fill out the survey  for a chance at winning DoubleTree by Hilton cookies yourself.

By: Britt Johnson

This week Digital Royalty client Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson kicked off a 25-day worldwide press tour in Taiwan to promote his upcoming action-adventure film, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. Amidst planning the social strategy to support his appearances, one hitch became more and more apparent: How will he share his experiences with his Chinese fans?

Due to strict government restrictions, popular American social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are banned throughout the country of nearly 1.3 billion residents. The regulations have spurred the rapid development of native platforms, one of which being Sina Weibo. The Twitter-like website allows users to post short-form bulletins, repost interesting content, and engage in two-way communication with friends.

Weibo currently boasts 250 million registered users, and nearly 80 million posts per day. Despite these statistics, very few American-based brands have taken the opportunity to extend their online influence to China and its surrounding counties. Digital Royalty helped Dwayne launched his Weibo account upon his arrival in Taiwan, joining the likes of other notable users such as Starbucks, the NBA and actor Hugh Jackman.

Several trans-continental e-mails and phone calls later, here are the lessons we learned from creating a Weibo account:

• Content is Key: Just like your English posts, Weibo fans want to connect with the human aspect of your brand. Quality photos and videos can cross the language barrier and communicate messages more effectively than text. Plan to utilize a media-rich content strategy if creating an international account.
• Ask for Help: Traditional Chinese is a complex language. Despite numerous translation tools available online, these methods cannot identify the subtle nuances in grammar and figures of speech. Identify resources that can assist with the translation of posts, and the optimization of brand accounts.
• Don’t be Afraid to Repeat: One look at your Facebook and Twitter insights will tell you that your content is not reaching much of the Chinese-speaking demographic, if at all. Re-purposing messaging from these sites is permissible, given the very small overlap in fans. For example, Dwayne utilizes his Taiwan-specific tweets and posts as material for his Weibo account.
• Acknowledge Cultural Differences: The beauty and challenge behind managing a Weibo account is finding messaging that will resonate with a new and unfamiliar audience. Acquaint yourself with the holidays and notable events that may affect your brand. Finding content that is specifically tailored to their interests will help your account to grow more quickly and accumulate dedicated fans.
• Get Certified: Much like Twitter, Weibo has a verification process for high-profile brands and personalities. Be sure to obtain the badge upon launching an account. Chinese fans rely heavily on the “certified” status. For this reason you will likely see a large spike in followers after Weibo has granted you the badge.

If your brand is seeking a comprehensive international social strategy, I highly recommend checking out what Weibo has to offer. So with these tips, I say, 好運氣. (Good luck!)

By: Britnee Johnson

Last week a colleague asked me how much time I’ve spent on Pinterest during the past 7 days. My response? A congenial laugh followed by a rational explanation that included this post and a pause before an admitted search for fashion and interior design. In any case, I don’t feel guilty because at this point, it’s me and about 3.2 million others who are adding to the unique monthly views of the platform that is taking the social media world by storm.

What sets Pinterest apart from trailblazing platforms like Tumblr and StumbleUpon is how it gives its users the ability to share in simple, highly visual ways. With one click, we can pin and collaborate on the best of the Web’s buried treasures. The comment and repin features, comparable to Twitter’s retweets and Facebook’s likes, add another layer to the collaborative function of the platform.

How can you leverage Pinterest for your brand? Pinterest allows companies to provide consumers with highly sharable content, which equates to free word of mouth marketing, proven to be the most effective form. It allows brands another medium to immerse themselves in and become just as familiar as the every-day user.

Diverse brands spanning from entertainment to hospitality have begun using Pinterest’s viral power. TIME Magazine posts pins from memorable historic moments while interior design brand, West Elm, provides users with visually stimulating boards.

In these two examples, TIME Magazine sees the benefit of pinning images that will both resonate with their brand and encourage users to evangelize via repins. West Elm provides design boards with segmented tips and ideas to encourage collaboration and drive continuous conversation. Both brands are delivering value when, where and how their audience wants it while growing both their brand’s community and awareness.

The value is in the transfer of the pin, the comment threads and the number of likes a pin receives. In the same way a Facebook “like,” a Twitter retweet or a Tumblr reblog correlates to more eyes on your content and stronger brand affinity from your audience, Pinterest offers a gateway to connect with consumers on a highly-engaging yet refreshingly simple platform.

With more brands utilizing Pinterest’s value offering for branding and marketing, hopefully back-end analytics and quantitative proof of the medium’s viral power won’t be far behind. With a 45 percent growth each month and the attention of some of our generation’s most powerful brands, that can’t be far off.

Digital Royalty Founder and CEO, Amy Jo Martin, was recently interviewed by TechCrunch to provide insight on the 2012 social media landscape. Article written by Joseph Puopolo:

In 2011, social media had its share of growing pains. Large brands and corporations took to social media in force to try to find footing in this expanding medium. Some brands found success, while others found peril and new PR nightmares. One person who has helped brands navigate the proverbial social media minefield is Amy Jo Martin. She is the founder of Digital Royalty, a social media firm that has set itself apart by helping A-listers find their social media voice.

Amy works with people like Dana White of the UFC, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson of acting/WWE fame and brands like Nike and Fox Sports (and now Joel Stein). Her specialty is working with organizations or individuals and making them look good online. Since the online world is in perpetual flux, I wanted to get Amy’s take on the social media landscape for 2012.

Here were a few key trends Amy said we should look out for in 2012:

1. Social TV Integration

Many shows have already begun to integrate social TV, either through polling or integrating social elements within the show. See my example of how both the UFC and WWE are integrating social media into their programming. Social media played a pivotal role in the last presidential election, and it will likely be more integrated into political broadcasts.

As each news channel fights hard to keep their viewers engaged, networks like CNN and Fox have made significant strides to engage their audience, although some would argue that this social media integration has come at the expense of hard-hitting journalism and analysis.

2. TV Is Going Online in a Big Way

2012 will be the first time that the Super Bowl will be streamed live to the world. Since the Super Bowl is generally viewed as the mother of all advertising spectacles, it will add a new dynamic into the digital component to advertising and social media integration.

3. Facebook Credits Take Center stage

Facebook in 2012 has the potential to project its power and truly take Facebook credits into a viable currency. Amy puts it quite well when she says “they’re building an online destination we’ll never need to leave, and my guess is they’re only about 8% of the way through their product roadmap.”

4. Big Business Has Woken Up

The way corporate entities approach social media is shifting. Many companies realize that setting up Twitter, YouTube and Facebook accounts is not going to cut it as their social media strategy. Brands will need to seriously shift their perspective by treating social channels more like communication channels and less like an advertising channels in order to make a difference. From my perspective this transition has already occurred, judging by the extent to which brands’ Twitter accounts are now used as channels for CRM and customer support, managing pissed off or happy customers in near realtime.

5. ROI Is Still Huge

ROI will remain a key metric to any social media strategy. The concept of engagement is now becoming more and more an excepted metric. CEO adoption of social media is improving, and more CEOs are recognizing the benefits of humanizing their brand by taking to Twitter.

Customer service, research and image branding could all be considered social media intangibles, yet all three are obviously important in business. Social channels impact every single aspect of business from human relations to finance, sales, operations and legal. It’s important for everyone to understand how social media affects their role and responsibilities. Opposite of television, social media is a dialogue vs. a monologue and if a brand is able to collect opinions real-time in high volume via social channels like Facebook polls, they can save a great deal of money on formal research studies.

There have been a lot of discussions about social media fatigue and whether brands refuse to play for that reason. With over a billion people on social media it’s irresponsible for any brand not to have some sort of presence. 2012 will be the year for brands to go beyond cookie cutter campaigns and really determine how it not only adds value to their company, but how it adds value for their customers. 2012 will be crucial for companies and social media. For those who don’t see a direct correlation between social media and sales consider:

“Social media is an ideal tool for moving people up the fan ladder, from being a casual fan of a brand to a loyalist, because the communication channels allow people to build stronger emotional connections with brands.”

So in 2012, the question is, how will your brand use effective strategy to move people up the fan ladder from interested to foaming at the mouth brand zealots?

By: Britnee Johnson

Today, my enthusiasm for Twitter has taken on a whole new level of excitement. If you were reading your social feeds this morning, odds are you saw the folks at Twitter chatting about their latest version of the platform via the #LetsFly hashtag. To those of you who are still trying to navigate the new design or are gearing up to explore option-features, I invite you to read below and find out exactly why the new version will have you seizing a pre-holiday thrill.

Prior to the new version, those of us logging into Twitter.com would see a simple feed of all our followers’ activity in addition to a separate feed of your own. Now, users will be exposed to an entirely new interface including tabs such as Home, Connect and #Discover, which provide an enhanced experience.

For the accounts who have enhanced profiles, new features will include:

• Enhanced profile with option to include an additional image below your profile avatar
• Ability to highlight the most engaging content to existing followers by ‘pinning’ a tweet to the top of your profile page
• Access Twitter Analytics for brand accounts that have enhanced accounts

Key takeaways for the everyday user will be that they receive the latest version of the platform equipped with the newest tab features and search options (equipped to lure in all social addicts) in addition to finding out the amount of retweets and favorite per tweet. The enhanced profiles will allow users and brands to better market to their audience through the second image (think spot for hashtag or ideal real estate for branded message) and added analytics. If you’re like me, you’ll find yourself even more excited about connecting with tweets, as there are added features like drop down selections for viewing multimedia in addition to a new user-friendly layout. As for marketers, it’ll be a big win if they know how to play their social media cards just right and creatively optimize the space.

Just from the looks of things, my social wheels are spinning. I’ll assume if your reading this, yours are, too. For more information, check out the Twitter tutorial, here.

By: Britnee Johnson

Everyone knows that in the world of social, good news travels fast and bad news travels faster.

Fortunately, Facebook has just launched a new Insights feature that will allow admins to analyze which of their fans have provided negative feedback (aka the bad news) and provided ways to monitor it more closely (damage control). The tool, which has come out 7-years after Facebook started, adds to what we can learn from real-life conversation. Those of you who consider yourselves social scientists are probably wondering, like me, why a tool like this didn’t come out sooner. Was it too early before? Perhaps just a timing-is-everything-approach to the recent Insights launched earlier this year? We may never know. In any case, let’s thank our social programming stars and run with the new data.

The feature, not to be confused with sentiment insight, provides admins the ability to view the number of unique users that gave negative feedback on a Page post in addition to dialing in on the people who hid a post or reported it as spam. Now admins can view the ‘bad’ comments in addition to unsubscribe and hide analytics.

So how will admins do this damage control? With the new feature, admins will be able to identify which content resonates best with fans. This means, when content receives overtly negative responses from fans, admins can assess and alter the content strategy and thus eliminate any future negative snags.

Translation? People like you and me can now be more successful when managing client accounts. Prior to the update, we could manually go through the conversation threads but now we can better assess the responses after a post is made. Ultimately, dialogue will continue to grow as admins discover what posts identify well with fans and which don’t.

By: Amy Jo Martin

The Social TV entertainment offering is only limited by our imagination. Yesterday, Dwayne Johnson turned the trending tables on national TV and dictated worldwide trending topics. During a live broadcast, he declared that certain phrases would trend instantly. Within minutes, they did.

Dwayne Johnson instantly bumped the live broadcast into the #1 Social TV spot:

More than 250 million users are on twitter and the trending topic list garners more than 150 million impressions each day. It’s safe to say this social call-to-action generated new viewership. The timing and spike in ratings speak to the impact Social TV has on the bigger picture. Additionally, advertisers are spending well into six figures daily to earn a spot on this worldwide trending topic list. When a brand can make this happen organically, influence is proven.

For other Digital Royalty Social TV case studies, such as The X Factor, click here.

By: Amy Jo Martin

The Social TV entertainment offering is only limited by our imagination. Yesterday, Dwayne Johnson turned the trending tables on national TV and dictated worldwide trending topics. During a live broadcast, he declared that certain phrases would trend instantly. Within minutes, they did.

Dwayne Johnson instantly bumped the live broadcast into the #1 Social TV spot:

More than 250 million users are on twitter and the trending topic list garners more than 150 million impressions each day. It’s safe to say this social call-to-action generated new viewership. The timing and spike in ratings speak to the impact Social TV has on the bigger picture. Additionally, advertisers are spending well into six figures daily to earn a spot on this worldwide trending topic list. When a brand can make this happen organically, influence is proven.

For other Digital Royalty Social TV case studies, such as The X Factor, click here.

By Alana Golob

Although the fate of Google+ and its 40 million users may be unknown, the platform has been making big (and quick) strides this week with the roll-out of the new Google+ Brand pages. Similar to Facebook, Google+ Brand pages allows brands to develop pages to publish content including photos, videos and links. Users can now add their favorite brands, teams, athletes and celebrities to their Circles. One added perk of Google+ Brand pages is the ability to have an animated photo strip. For a great example, check out what Red Bull did.

Google has successfully developed a platform that is focused on the elements that enhance communication and interaction, whether it’s between family members or a brand’s loyal consumers.

The following are key takeaways from the Google+ platform:

Google+ Circles:
My husband knows better than to talk to me about fishing, because it’s a guarantee that I’ll stop listening within the first 2.3 seconds. The same goes for me and talking to him about my favorite reality TV shows. Google has taken this basic communication principle and developed Google+ Circles. This feature allows brands to segment their audience based on demographics/geographics by adding them to specific Circles. Marketers then have the ability to control the content that their audience digests and deliver value that is relevant to a specific audience (circle).

Google+ Hangout:
As technology progresses, human interaction will continue to decrease at the same rate. Nothing will ever replace the power of face-to-face interaction, and Google+ Hangouts makes an attempt to fill that void. The feature allows brands to have live video interaction with their consumers, guests and fans. Imagine the relationship potential there.

Founder of Digital Royalty, Amy Jo Martin, had the opportunity to take part in a G+nius Women Panel hosted on Google+ Hangout prior to her speaking at an upcoming TEDxRainer event. Five speakers participated with one moderator. Although Google+ Hangouts limits session to 10 individuals per Hangout, the cool factor is that the one-hour panel discussion was recorded and repurposed on YouTube so it could be shared with thousands and watched, here.

On a larger scale, Will.i.am gave exclusive backstage access to fans through Google+ Hangouts On Air that was broadcasted live on YouTube back in September.

Google+ Badges:

Following the Brand page roll-out, Google+ did a quiet roll-out of their Google+ Badges. The Badge signifies which of your friends have given a “+1” to a website, or in other words given their recommendation. It connects your Google+ brand page with your website. The Badge also gives the user the opportunity to add a site to their circle. This increases visibility to your site, which ultimately leads to higher web-traffic. A brands potential reach of +1 doesn’t end with the 40 million users on Google+, but the billions of people that visit Google each day.

It’s your move, Facebook.

By: Kirsten Stubbs

Social TV used to mean families gathering around their televisions to discuss sitcoms over TV dinners on portable trays. Tonight, The X Factor USA ushers in a new generation of social TV, spreading the discussion from across your living room to across the world.

As one of television’s most buzzed-about programs on social media, it only makes sense that the show would harness the power of the readily available and plentiful opinions of its socially savvy viewers and give them the power to vote via Twitter.

In addition to voting via phone, text message, website and Facebook wall, The X Factor USA is the first television talent competition to allow fans to vote for their favorite acts via Twitter through direct messages.

It all goes back to social media’s inherent ability to deliver value when, where and how fans (or customers, consumers, guests, clients) want it.  The people behind The X Factor realize a vast portion of their audience is discussing the show online and are using that latent power to enhance the already social idea of voting for the future of the show and the ultimate winner.

Interested in voting for your favorite contestant via Twitter DM or any other medium… and being part of the future of social TV? Check-out all the ways you can voice your opinion on The X Factor here.