April 12, 2021 by Eric Salgado-Valle

Giving away without selling out

What are giveaways?

Giveaways are a popular growth strategy that brands often use to increase their engagement and follower count on social media. The majority of giveaways are done by asking their audience to follow the account, tag friends in the comments and share it on their story. This is an excellent way to increase traffic to your online store and your social media account since the algorithm cares about the quality of the post and the percentage of your followers engaging with it. Liking, commenting and tagging friends inflate this and as a result, the algorithm pushes your post to the top of people’s feeds and is more likely to be seen by others.

An example of what a typical giveaway will ask you to do. Source: SproutSocial

Are giveaways effective?

Yes! But success will depend on a myriad of factors. As previously mentioned, giveaways are a great tool for increasing your following and creating awareness about your brand and what you have to offer. The only problem with this is that it can attract “ghost followers”, inactive followers that aren’t interested in your product. Because the algorithm doesn’t care about your total followers, these ghost followers can negatively affect your engagement rating since they won’t be interacting with your organic content. A way to get around this is by offering prizes that are a little more niche and catered to your existing audience. In other words, don’t offer generic prizes like gift cards and consoles. Having something specific to your audience will stop people like me from entering contests just because it’s free and easy.

This type of giveaway would attract ghost followers since they’re offering THE most generic prize that everyone would love to win, gift cards. Source: SproutSocial

Best practices when hosting giveaways:

Make entering easy! How many times have you clicked off a giveaway because they were asking for too much? Simplicity is key.
Make sure someone is moderating the comments and is interacting with the audience. I was pleasantly surprised when the account I followed for a giveaway thanked me for entering.
Follow up after the giveaway is over by announcing the winner and giving the rest of the participants a reason to visit your online store
Giveaway products that your audience would appreciate and is relevant to them.

What’s your general outlook on giveaways, do you think it means brands are shilling for followers or do you think it’s an effective way to increase brand awareness? Let me know in the comments below!

Facebook: Have you ever wondered why giveaways are so popular on social media? Find out now by reading my latest blog post here: http://bit.ly/GiveawaySM

Twitter: Are giveaways helping or hurting brands? Find out now by reading my latest blog post here: http://bit.ly/GiveawaySM

References:

https://www.thedesigntwins.com/instagram-giveaways-helping-hurting-growth/
https://gleam.io/blog/giveaway-mistakes/
https://nealschaffer.com/6-benefits-of-running-social-media-contests/
https://www.qualitylogoproducts.com/blog/social-media-giveaways-5-brands/

April 6, 2021 by Eric Salgado-Valle

Twitch gains advertising dollars but at what cost?

Have you ever been watching something and as soon as an ad starts to play you click away to another video or walk away entirely? This is an all too common problem that has just recently entered the world of online gaming/streaming. Twitch, a live-streaming platform that has over 140 million monthly active viewers, has recently come under fire for implementing mid-roll advertising into their streams. While this is something commonly seen on cable television, it’s out of place in the world of online streaming.

In September, Twitch started running their pilot project for mid-roll ads. They advertised this change as an experiment to gauge the response of the community. However, after only a few days, this feature was disabled due to the negative response from Twitch users.

The reason why Twitch streamers were upset with the changes is because they lost control over when they can run ads on their channel which affects their audience by forcing them to miss important parts of their stream.

Platform controlled mid roll ads on live streams are G A R B A G E pic.twitter.com/KTtLbNHVEs
— GottaBeHenry🇪🇺 (@GottaBeHenry) September 15, 2020

An example of Twitch mid roll ads ruining a climatic moment.

Another issue with their experiment was that viewers felt the ads disconnected them from the immersive experience of the stream. Streams can feel very personal and with this ad interruption it breaks the connection between the streamer and their audience.

Twitch decided to disable the feature but the fact that they were prioritizing advertising over the experience of the user has led many Twitch users to lose trust in the company.

An example of Twitter users losing trust in Twitch regarding their future plans

The response from Twitch was really poor. Streamers were complaining that their viewers were still getting mid-roll ads even though the feature had been disabled by Twitch. Instead of apologizing for the glitch and looking into fixing the problem, Twitch put the blame on third party extensions, claiming that it wasn’t their fault.

Twitch shifting the blame to third party tools/extensions.

Twitch has become greedy with their advertising and they need to listen to their streamers and audience to see what they want. They should be having more open discussion about the changes before they occur and listen closely to the opinions of their stakeholders. By being more transparent with future changes, Twitch will hopefully be able to regain some trust with its user-base over time.

What do you think? Are mid-roll ads justified because they are often seen in cable television or are they a thing of the past?

Facebook: Has Twitch gone too far? Find out now what millions of users are saying about their new “pilot project” over at: bit.ly/TwitchMidRollAds

Twitter: Has Twitch gone too far? Find out now what millions of users are saying about their new “pilot project” over at: bit.ly/TwitchMidRollAds

Resources:
– https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/15/21437787/twitch-midroll-ad-affiliate-partner-cpm
– https://www.cbr.com/twitch-stops-mid-roll-ad-test/
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV1TunHXoQM&ab_channel=Lowco
– https://twitch.uservoice.com/forums/310237-ads/suggestions/41391901-remove-mid-roll-ads
– https://backlinko.com/twitch-users

March 28, 2021 by Eric Salgado-Valle

Publicity stunt and Burger King, Name a More Iconic Duo, I’ll Wait.

On July 8th, 2020, Burger King posted a video called, “Burger King | The King of Stream” on their YouTube channel. It was a two minute video that used reactions of content creators as footage for their ad. If you aren’t already familiar with Twitch, it’s a live-streaming platform where people can broadcast their lives/gameplay to a live audience. Twitch has several unique functions like Text-to-Speech donations where people can donate to the content creator and attach a message that’s read aloud by the AI.

Brands usually approach streamers through direct messaging on social media/email about opportunities for sponsorship or collaboration. If the content creator agrees to work with the brand, a detailed contract that goes over the pay, ad reads and other specifics is signed shortly after. For some strange reason, Burger King thought it would be a good idea to advertise their new deals by donating to streamers the exact amount of money their combos go for. In other words, a multi-BILLION dollar corporation was using someone else’s platform to advertise new products for less than $10. To an outsider this might not come across as a big deal since the streamer is getting paid “free money” for playing video games but the reality is, brands are willing to upwards of $10,000 to work with an influencer.

Unfortunately, the compensation isn’t the only issue here. Burger King’s publicity stunt had the potential to ruin a streamer’s relationship with other brands since they never asked for consent. If the influencer was working closely with McDonald’s and they showed up in an ad like that, how do you think McDonald’s would take it? Not very well.

The ad was dead on arrival. As of today, the video has over 150,000 views, thousands of negative comments and a dislike ratio of 87% What do you guys think about Burger King’s approach, did the public behave accordingly or should people lighten up? Let me know what you think in the comment section below!

Video by: Burger King | Burger King’s infamous commercial exploiting content creators.

Facebook: Ever wonder how expensive fast food commercials are? According to Burger King, they can be as cheap as $50. Find out now what kind of trouble Burger King recently got themselves into. https://tinyurl.com/BKTwitchScandal

Twitter: You won’t believe what Burger King did wrong this time. Find out what other trouble the fast food titan got themselves into. https://tinyurl.com/BKTwitchScandal

References:

https://www.marketingdive.com/news/burger-king-angers-twitch-streamers-with-stunt-campaign/584062/#:~:text=Burger%20King%20angered%20people%20who,its%20work%2C%20Ad%20Age%20reported.

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-53862091