The Gong Blog

Topic: Social Media

Over shoulder someone using laptop

What is Reddit?

ELI5, TIL, /s— don’t worry, these aren’t new slang terms teens are using to communicate with friends about how unfair their parents are being about a 10 p.m. curfew. IIRC they’re common abbreviations used on the social media platform Reddit. More to come on them in a minute… For the unfamiliar, Reddit is a social platform that refers to itself as the “front page of the internet,” a “community of millions of users engaging in the creation of content and the sharing of conversation across…

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A lesson in content marketing, inspired by salad

Those who know me best know I love to cook. If you were a fly on the wall in my kitchen, you’d likely hear me narrating my dinner preparation like I was a Food Network Star. In fact, when I was little, I drafted up a pitch for Food Network because I was disappointed in its lack of children’s programming. Never followed through though. You’re welcome, Hodges. My YouTube homepage is filled with cooking videos. My Pinterest with recipes. At 26, I own a KitchenAid…

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Communication Counsel: What you need to know about #influencer campaigns

Thanks to the Kardashians and a seemingly unlimited “influencer” workforce, we bet that within a finger swipe of your social feeds, you’ll find an influencer marketing a product to their followers. The influencer space has quickly snowballed over the last couple of years, and the Federal Trade Commission has been working hard to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak. In a space that is so saturated with influencers, it’s been difficult to regulate and monitor this space. That said, when the FTC comes…

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What is TikTok? Here’s what marketers need to know

I’m hailing it the most cringeworthy social platform yet. But then again, my mom never let me have MySpace. Plus, it’s the first platform where I am older than the primary target audience, so maybe I’m just getting old and crotchety? TikTok. The what Remember Vine? RIP. And how about Musical.ly? Similar to both those ghosts of app pasts, TikTok is an app for making and sharing short videos. In fact, TikTok used to be Musical.ly until it was purchased by the Chinese company, ByteDance…

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Making the case for knocking down marketing pyramids

If your newsfeed is anything like mine, you don’t have to do more than a thumb swipe to find a friend posting about some product or service that is CHANGING MY LIFE, Y’ALL. In the 50s, you had Tupperware. The 60s, Mary Kay. But what was once contained to our living rooms has now inundated our social media worlds. Multi-level marketing (MLM), or network marketing, is the practice of recruiting an army of associates to sell products – nowadays, primarily on Facebook, Instagram and elsewhere,…

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Two Instagram updates you need to know right now

Ever feel like as soon as you finally get a handle on the latest and greatest in the social media world, one (or more) of the platforms just straight up laughs in your face? Same. Instagram just rolled out two new stickers for its Stories feature, and I’m not going to lie, for once I’m actually very excited about these new offerings. Instagram donation sticker for nonprofits If you work in the marketing department of a nonprofit that uses Instagram, your world is about to…

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Blocking Critics on Facebook Is Not Just Illegal, It’s Bad Business

More than a few years back, we had a client that had an aversion to social media. A small government agency, it was intrigued by the idea of being able to post its news directly to its constituencies on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. After all, such tools were changing – and have changed – the face of public relations and put several target-seeking arrows into the PR quiver. But when the agency realized that citizens would be able to comment on its otherwise oh-so-positive…

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My Take: The Most Influential Marketers of 2018

With apologies to Weiden + Kennedy, whose Nike spot featuring Colin Kaepernick was no doubt the most talked-about spot in 2018, my choice for marketer of the year reflects a strategy that is older than marketing itself and yet has now reached such a critical mass and level of sophistication that it’s difficult to point to anything else that is as effective. I’m talking about influencers. Influencers, of course, have been around for a long time. Asking your friends and neighbors for a recommendation on…

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What to Expect with Influencer Marketing

Social media influencer marketing has become an increasingly popular tactic, with influencer campaigns on Instagram increasing nearly 200 percent last year. If your organization is new to the world of influencer marketing, you might be wondering what kind of results you can expect, especially if you work for a B2C company. Influencer marketing is a vague term that can mean different things to different people, but for the purpose of this blog post, influencer marketing is the practice of sharing your product with influential individuals…

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Using video for social media

Make the Most of Your Social Media Video Strategy in 2019

If you’re not including video in your content marketing and social media strategy in 2019, do yourself a favor and stop reading this and start planning. Video content is becoming critically important in today’s social media landscape, and we’re not just saying this as marketers. There is data to prove it: Animoto found that 64 percent of consumers made a purchase after watching a branded video on Facebook. Aberdeen discovered that brands who utilize video see their revenue increase 49 percent faster than companies that…

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Wrestling With Twitter

Over the years, my Hodges colleagues have written quite a bit about Twitter on this blog. From explaining how Twitter works in 2009 and “Twitter is Dead” back in 2011 to building brand loyalty for your CEO on Twitter in 2016 and tips for increasing organic engagement last year, we’ve covered a lot of ground. Personally, I’m at a Twitter crossroads, and not just because Twitter may be making some changes to the like button and The Atlantic says it should kill the retweet. What…

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How the Changes to LinkedIn Company Pages Might Impact Your Social Strategy

Earlier this week, LinkedIn announced a few significant changes to Company Pages on its platform — which caused our ears to perk up a little bit. We’ve been using LinkedIn as a communications channel to tell our clients’ stories since Company Pages launched in 2010. Now, with big changes afoot, here’s the 30,000-foot view of the features that will be rolling out over the next few months and the impact they might have on your organization’s social strategy. User-friendly mobile experience for admins Admins can…

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