The End of Buy Button-Free Holidays? Maybe.

January 07, 2016 by Taylor Wiegert in Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Social Ads, Social Commerce, Twitter, Trends

The holidays are over, and marketers are looking at which of their efforts helped put them in the black and which held them back. Social is, without a doubt, part of that analysis. This season, however, brought the initial stages of something we didn’t have before: The Buy Button.

The Shift to Social Commerce

October 20, 2015 by Taylor Wiegert in Shopping, Social Ads, Social Business, Social Commerce

Buy buy buy. That is the message digital platforms are aiming to send to users. The buy button has made its way onto Pinterest in a big way with 60 million Buyable Pins on the platform. Twitter’s Buy Button is becoming more widely available thanks to new partnerships with Demandware, Bigcommerce and Shopify. And even Facebook is pushing its users to buy with product browsing features it hosts called Canvas and a new Shopping section that curates all products available for sale on the site from Pages, Groups and ads in News Feeds.

These platforms are making a shift, and they’re challenging both users and marketers to rethink how they use them. These social platforms aren’t just places to connect with other people and socialize. They’re places to buy and sell—the shopping malls of the Internet. You go there with friends and you buy from the brands.

Social Commerce’s Tipping Point

June 09, 2015 by Taylor Wiegert in Advertising, Future, Paid, Pinterest, Search, Social Ads, Social Commerce, Twitter, YouTube, Google, Facebook

Commerce on social channels is at a major tipping point. It’s going to succeed, or it’s going to fail. And we’ll know which soon enough. Commerce on social platforms is nothing new. Some brands launched storefronts on their Facebook pages years ago. For a variety of reasons, these never took off, and in today’s environment of Facebook tabs being deemphasized, they wouldn’t stand a chance.

Now, we’re entering the new era of social commerce as platforms roll out native commerce solutions. Pinterest now has Buyable Pins, enabling anyone to buy a product they see on Pinterest directly on the platform. Instagram is improving its ads by adding options for users to ‘Buy Now,’ as well as take other actions. Google is introducing a buy button in search results, while adding a click-to-shop CTA to YouTube videos. Then we have both Facebook and Twitter testing buy buttons of their own.

Social commerce is the new video. Everyone’s doing it.

We Are Content Amplifiers

October 24, 2014 by Taylor Wiegert in Content Marketing, Paid, Promoted, Social Ads

There is a constant churn going on every minute of every day in nearly every business. Today, 88% of U.S. companies are using social media for marketing purposes. Every one of those businesses is working to stand out from the others with the content they create. The battle for the News Feed, the slugfest for attention and the mission for reach continues, but in today's social environment, content creation isn't what it used to be.

The Final Days of Purely Organic Social

August 19, 2014 by Taylor Wiegert in Social Ads, Paid, Promoted

Social media marketing has played many roles over the years, but ever since it began, the first to-do on most marketers' lists was to recruit likes and followers in order to create and deliver content, generate conversations and build "one-to-one relationships."

Those days are over. The era of like-building and follower growth is waning, and the role of social media is changing.