Social Media Channel

 The Gap wanted to look like a more forward leaning company so they hired an agency to redesign their logo.  The new logo was active for almost a full four days before Twitter and Facebook users tore it to shreds.  Gap went back to the old logo so fast that the new logo hardly had time to be noticed offline before entering the annals of history as the logo version of New Coke.

You can avoid making the mistake they made by better understanding how marketing and branding work in the 21st century.  Even better, you can discover some good marketing tips to help your business.

 Labor Day 2010 will forever be remembered in Boulder as the day the Four Mile Canyon fire began to burn. Today, two days later, at least 7,000 acres and 140 structures (including 9 homes owned by fire fighters) have been consumed by the fire that is still burning.

In a sign of a tech-savvy community, residents immediately began flooding Twitter with the hashtag #boulderfire to share information. This proved to be most helpful as we discovered the failure of the 911 callback system designated to alert people to evacuate their homes. Boulder authorities used Twitter as the main way to reach people in the evacuation area quickly.

In 2009 Google Wave was heralded as a giant evolutionary step in how we would communicate and collaborate online. I admit to being one of the disciples of buzz who ate the hype and imagined a paradigm shift in how online communities would interact.  We were all wrong, but who knows what bricks Google Wave laid down for innovation towards the evolving road of how people use the Internet.

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.  Influencer Marketing is the 'new black' in advertising because it meshes the trust that influencers have built over time with ad dollars from brands who don't have that level of trust with their audience.

The reason that later adopters to using social media are sometimes finding that it doesn't work for them is that they are using old broadcast marketing methods with new engagement platforms. Shouting a message that was not requested by the audience in a community fueled by passionate conversations is a recipe for disaster.

 Earned media and paid media are converging with influencer marketing.  The first wve of media convergence was between television and the internet.  This wave is converging individual influencers and brands as publishers who reach targeted audiences together.