“In response to the increasing need for today’s students to acquire skills and fluency in social media, Utah Valley University, in partnership with NUVI, will open the NUVI Social Media Command Center — a new facility on UVU’s Orem campus that provides students with engaged learning experiences and hands-on training in a professional environment,” a provided statement reads.

The ribbon cutting took place earlier this week at the Losee Center.

“Social media has become an integral part of the modern workplace,” said UVU Vice President of University Relations Cameron Martin. “These are some of the most essential skills our students can learn to prepare for a 24/7, always-connected world. We’re proud to provide this important resource for our students’ success.”

The SMCC is located adjacent to UVU’s University Marketing & Communications offices to allow interaction between students and professional staff.

“Using the NUVI Social Media Command Center will allow students, faculty, and staff to have access to cutting-edge technology,” said NUVI Chairman and CEO Keith Nellesen. “Organizations all over the world are using NUVI to better engage with their customers, gather unsolicited feedback, manage crisis situations, and make product improvements.”

The post UVU and NUVI to Open New Social Media Command Center appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

According to the report in question, the final word in social media may soon be lots fewer words — and a whole lot more video.

Animoto researchers weren’t shocked. After all, they had heard Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg say in a recent earning call that “Ten years ago, most of what we shared and consumed online was text. Now it’s photos, and soon most of it will be video.”

Today, “video-first” has become a reality for consumers and marketers alike.

“After Animoto surveyed 1,000 consumers and 500 marketers to find out how video is making an impact, the data showed that 64 percent of consumers say watching a marketing video on Facebook has influenced a purchase decision in the last month,” the report explains. “And 81 percent of marketers are optimizing their social videos for mobile viewership, including 39% that are creating square and/or vertical videos.”

The top three channels for social video? Facebook, Instagram Stories, and Snapchat are currently the leaders of the pack.

Check out the full infographic below.

The post If You’re Marketing on Social Media, It’s Time to Get Serious About Video appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

A pioneer in social analytics, the company has just released its third annual “State of Social Marketing” report, which provides insights from more than 2,700 social media professionals in 111 countries—with the perspectives of both brands and agencies.

“At the end of the day, your job as a marketer—any kind of marketer—is to sell. This is true even if you are tasked with increasing brand awareness and cultivating a community on social, as three-quarters of our survey respondents are,” said Scott Fallon, vice president of Marketing at Simply Measured. “It just means that your target market is closer to the top of the funnel. As more budget is devoted to social—social spending is expected to rise to 17.3 billion by 2019 —social marketers will be pressed to make the link between engagement and conversions. Social marketers won’t stop paying attention to engagement and amplification metrics, but they will be asked to set and meet conversion goals, too.”

There is a severe gap here today: 90 percent of marketers surveyed struggle to measure ROI and/or tie social to business goals. The report positions 2017 as the year of contradictions, with social ad investment increasing, but a lack of industry-wide goal-setting, and more than half of brands saying that influencers are vital to the success of their social programs, but over 76 percent of brands saying they have no dedicated budget for influencer marketing.

Agencies, however, are pushing for results from social more than brands: 73 percent of agencies set goals for either web traffic or conversion goals, while only 57 percent of brand marketers do. This indicates that social marketers at agencies have stronger goal-setting (and achieving) baselines than social marketers within the brand environment.

“Whether brand or agency, social media is a foundational marketing strategy that—if properly tracked and analyzed—has the ability to impact the buyer’s journey at all stages in the funnel,” explains report author Lucy Hitz, head of Marketing Communications, Simply Measured. “However, marketers still find difficulty quantifying the impact of social media and are unsure of how to distribute resources to generate the most value from their social campaigns.”

To learn more, check out the full report here.

The post Simply Measured Research Points to Increase in Social Marketing’s Importance appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

“For more than a decade, people have used social media to express themselves and inform and engage users across the globe. Now, a new study by Florida State University researchers examines the impact rising temperatures have on Twitter activity, and how government officials use the social media tool to warn the general public of heatwave conditions,” reads a statement emailed to MMW.

FSU doctoral student Jihoon Jung and Assistant Professor of Geography Chris Uejio co-authored the paper published in the International Journal of Biometeorology.

The big discovery? Researchers found in Atlanta, Los Angeles and New York City that as temperatures rose, the number of temperature-related tweets increased.

“If more agencies start to include social media and tap into what people are actually experiencing in real time, they can improve their extreme heat early warning systems,” Uejio said. “We are also hoping that these government groups will start to include more health information in their social media messaging.”

As the official report summary explains, extreme heat early warning systems are comprehensive programs where government officials communicate with the public and take actions such as opening cooling shelters or emergency distress lines that people can call if they have heat-related problems.

“A purpose of this study was to improve those early warning systems,” Uejio said.

The post A Tweet to Beat the Heat? New Report Reveals Hot Social Media Trend appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The company, we’re told, now allows customers to plan, execute and optimize their Instagram marketing strategy from a single platform with a new publishing flow.

What’s included in the latest update?

With this update, Falcon.io becomes “the only platform of its kind that enables customers to create and schedule Instagram Stories and carousel posts of up to 10 images or videos, in addition to single image or video posts.”

Falcon.io’s newly redesigned Hub mobile app also enables customers to get a full overview of all scheduled and published Instagram content, receive push notifications for posts ready for publication, and collaborate with their team on content.

“The ability to create and schedule Instagram content directly through the Falcon.io platform has made it even more of a versatile tool in our social media strategy,” said Brandon Edler, content manager and creative strategist at The Finish Line. “Enabling the marketing team to collaborate and approve posts within the new publishing flow ensures that everything we post to Instagram has an end to end audit trail that ensures our team stays on brand and delivers value.”

The post Falcon.io Rolls Out Instagram Publishing Flow for Stories and Carousel appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

According to the report in question, the final word in social media may soon be lots fewer words — and a whole lot more video.

Animoto researchers weren’t shocked. After all, they had heard Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg say in a recent earning call that “Ten years ago, most of what we shared and consumed online was text. Now it’s photos, and soon most of it will be video.”

Today, “video-first” has become a reality for consumers and marketers alike.

“After Animoto surveyed 1,000 consumers and 500 marketers to find out how video is making an impact, the data showed that 64 percent of consumers say watching a marketing video on Facebook has influenced a purchase decision in the last month,” the report explains. “And 81 percent of marketers are optimizing their social videos for mobile viewership, including 39% that are creating square and/or vertical videos.”

The top three channels for social video? Facebook, Instagram Stories, and Snapchat are currently the leaders of the pack.

Check out the full infographic below.

The post Infographic: Video More Important Than Ever in Social Media appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

“This latest distinction gives Perion competitive reach capabilities and positions the Company to drive global ad objectives,” a provided statement explains.

According to Doron Gerstel, CEO of Perion, being named a Snapchat Partner enhances Perion’s offering, “adding to our long term organic growth strategy, taking us to the next level with a more expanded one-stop ad solution for our Fortune 500 clients worldwide.”

Backed by a survey collaboration with IFOP (Institut français d’opinion publique), MakeMeReach can now deliver high level Snapchat ad management to its existing social platform allowing advertisers to launch campaigns on any size budget and optimize performance on their platform.

“This new integration will allow our clients to run campaigns on Snapchat and benefit from the expertise of our team on this rapidly growing mobile platform. Being recognized as a Snapchat Partner marks a new milestone for MakeMeReach, and for Perion as a whole. Further to successful partnerships with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, we can now deliver the ultimate social media ad management platform, creating a stronger synergy among Perion’s business divisions in the process,” concluded Pierre- Francois Chiron, co-founder of Perion’s MakeMeReach division.

The post Perion’s Social Media Division Named a Snapchat Partner appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

Leapfrog’s proven approach was built by a team of conversion marketing experts and is fueled by the company’s LFX Conversion Platform. Through this marketing operating system, Leapfrog leverages predictive modeling, achieve accurate targeting, and monitor data in real time to achieve continuous Paid Social optimization.

“Social media now plays a major role in prospective students’ journeys—from researching schools through enrollment. An institution’s tools and strategies must keep pace if they are to effectively reach prospects at key decision points along the way,” says Mike Shutty, Senior Vice President at Leapfrog.

In addition to Paid Social, Leapfrog’s LFX driven solutions can be scaled within an education organization and impact almost any area of the marketing program including mobile, media, and paid search. The agency has a proven track record of delivering inquiries with higher application conversion rates while decreasing cost-per-acquisition.

“Leapfrog has deeper experience in the education marketplace than almost any other agency,” adds Shutty. “Our team of category experts understand the unique dynamics and demands of this sector and we’re able to provide more actionable intelligence across the entire student enrollment journey…and most importantly…deliver big results.”

More information about Leapfrog and its proprietary solutions driven by the LFX Conversion Platform is available here.

The post Leapfrog Offers Performance Marketing Solution to Help Higher Education Institutions Optimize Paid Social Efforts appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

The following is an exclusive guest contributed post to MMW from Shawn Arora, the founder of LaunchSpark

Instagram is a popular and highly engaging social media platform. In just seven years, Instagram has significantly increased its user base in almost all demographic groups, and now helps users share roughly 80 million new photos every day. According to Forrester Research, there is a 4.21% per follower engagement rate for every Instagram post. This is 120 times higher than Twitter and 58 times higher than Facebook. For marketers, Instagram is a vital resource, and learning how to use it effectively is crucial. Here is a few hacks to get you going:

Connect to Facebook

Since Facebook owns Instagram, it is easy to connect your profiles on these platforms. By doing so, your posts on one platform will automatically be posted to the other platform as well. If there is not considerable overlap among your followers on each platform, this is a great way to maximize the outreach of your posts. Even if there is a lot of overlap, you will be able to reach all of your followers equally, regardless of which platform each frequents most.

Use Specific Hashtags

Hashtags are key to discovery on Instagram – how else do people discover your content in the barrage of 80 million images uploaded every day? With hashtags, you can define your content and make it stand out as relevant for particular audiences. There is no limit to the number of hashtags you can use, so don’t shy away from this feature.

That said, you don’t want to overdo it. Adding too many hashtags can come across as desperate and obscures your content. The point of a hashtag is to quickly and clearly tell users what your content is about before they click on it. Therefore, you only want to use hashtags that are specific and succinctly describe your post. By doing this, you can easily feature on the Discovery / Search dashboard and gain more views. Do some research on trending hashtags in your niche to get started.

Once your account has a large enough following, you can utilize Hashtag Contests to increase engagement with your account. Here’s how it works: First, choose a hashtag thats is relevant to your niche. Next, encourage your followers to upload photos and videos that fit the hashtag. Finally, create a gallery of these posts and upload it to Facebook, Instagram, and your website where people can vote for winners. By doing so, you’ll increase engagement with your chosen hashtag and drive a lot of traffic to your Instagram account. If your following is large enough, you could even create your own hashtags that are specific to your brand.

Shout Out to Followers

It is important to give as you receive. One reason why Starbucks is among the top five brands on Instagram is that they routinely give shout outs to their follower’s accounts. By linking to follower’s accounts and even setting follower’s images as their account photo, they maintain their followers and also attract new ones. Just make sure to seek permission from the original poster if you’re going to do this.

There are other ways to shout out to followers. One way is by embedding user submissions on your website. If your site has a lot of traffic, it will provide great exposure for the user. You can also draw attention to your followers by liking and commenting on their photos, responding to their comments on your posts and using @mention while interacting with them.

These gestures show you really care about your followers and that you’re not some cold and inactive account that only wants followers but gives nothing in return. This can only make more people want to follow you.

Be Creative with Brand Promotions

Ultimately, every brand wants to use Instagram to promote their products and services. But when you do, its important to stay classy, cool, and creative. Pilot Pen USA, for example, uploads pictures of beautiful notes written with their pens.

But you don’t need to stick to just product demos. Other great tactics include uploading videos of the brand’s core members discussing company culture, or cool photos of company events, networking clips, parties and other fun activities. The idea is to get the audience to relate to the brand, rather than just providing a product demo. Videos are particularly effective here, which is why it’s now one of the most widely used features for marketers.

Get People Talking

There are various ways to get followers talking about your brand. By asking for product feedback, suggestions, and real-time images of followers using your products, opening a Q&A networking session, or doing anything else that makes followers feel they are part of an inclusive circle, you’ll create a community around your account.

Bottom Line

There tons of Instagram hacks out there that will help your marketing campaign. Take note of what successful brands are doing on their account and see how you can incorporate their strategies in your own. Be creative and stay committed to it as Instagram marketing is an ongoing and dynamic process.

The post 5 Hacks for Instagram Marketing on Mobile appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.

February 27 – March 1 marks the first ever independent satellite experience in Atlanta to further its effort in connecting people, content and conversation as well as advancing the understanding of social media’s role in society, a provided statement to MMW reads.

Social Media Week Independent Atlanta (SMWi Atlanta) is organized by Social Fancy –  a branding and media agency specializing in the industries of beauty, fashion, lifestyle, health and emerging technology.

We’re told that the event will take place at Steelcase, a leading furniture provider whose innovative showroom provides the perfect backdrop to the exploration of human connectivity.

“We are very excited to bring the global stage of Social Media Week to Atlanta,” says Amyr Heard, President and CEO of Social Fancy. “It goes without saying that social media fuels the way we live, and it is our highest priority to provide the necessary tools, tips and resources for us to thrive personally, professionally and beyond!”

Want to know more? Click here.

The post Social Media Week Ready to Take Atlanta By Storm appeared first on Mobile Marketing Watch.