The channels, which cost from $0.99 per month in subscription fees, promise to deliver a new, more flexible way for content partners to distribute and make money from videos beyond the traditional ad revenue stream.

Among the 30 partners announced at the launch of a pilot programme include the producers of Sesame Street, who will be offering full episodes on their paid channel when it launches, and the somewhat less child-friendly Ultimate Fighting Championship, offering full versions of classic fights.

All channels will offer a 14-day free trial, with many offering discounted annual rates to encourage sign-up, all of which will be available to pay by credit card. In the coming weeks, we can expect to see paid channels rolling out more broadly as a self-service feature for qualifying partners.

Paid channels represent a long-awaited addition to YouTube’s marketing offer and will no doubt be of interest to the site’s thousands of existing content partners.

Channel creators will get to keep upwards of half of subscription revenues, while YouTube keeps the rest (45%). In this respect, the financial rewards match existing arrangements for the sharing of the site’s ad revenues.

In some respects, the potential of paid channels for advertisers and agencies is appealing. As the industry scrambles to keep up with the shift away from traditional TV slots, YouTube paid channels pose a new way to reach audiences, targeted at specific programme level. Vertical channels, if they amass enough of an audience, could be a useful way to reach well defined and delineated demographics.

FPR’s Final Thought

Paid channels certainly appear a viable way of advancing YouTube’s marketing potential and tapping into its appealingly vast audience (currently over 1 billion monthly unique users).  Yet the big question mark rests over the hurdle of getting YouTube users to fork out to access content on a traditionally free site. Online video is, after all, founded on a culture of freely sharing. In the age of the ever advancing paywall, should social media be the one media channel that remains accessible to all, or is a subscription model now the only way to guarantee quality digital entertainment?

Where does social media sit within the customer journey?

These potential engagement touchpoints, let’s call them ‘moments of truth’, are not limited to any one channel. In fact, as the number of channels and devices that consumers access throughout the typical day rises to include TV, smartphones, PCs, tablets, in-store, the journey becomes increasingly complex – posing both opportunities and challenges.

More than half of smartphone owners use social networks every day, with 35% logging in several times per day (Source: Edison Research, The Smartphone Consumer, 2012). This proliferation of social networking creates massive opportunties for brands to engage with people throughout the day. As such, savvy brands are tailoring their messaging to speak to people’s needs from the early morning caffeine hit through to the tiresome commute home.

The evolution of social to broader digital engagement

Engagement occurs at that ‘moment of truth’ when a brand and a consumer interact, irrespective of what channel this happens on. But brands understandably don’t want to measure marketing efforts by totting up ‘moments of truth’. Fortunately, engagement can be measured by the actions, reactions, sentiment and outcomes that follow each of those interactions.

But to take a more holistic approach, brands needs to look beyond Facebook Likes and Twitter mentions to understand outcomes and sentiments happening in every part of the customer journey – on mobile, social, web and IRL (‘in real life’).

Which brands are embracing the new digital engagement?

Developing a more unified approach to digital engagement comes down to the perennial theme of breaking down silos and encouraging sharing of data and ideas between departments. When PR sits apart from social media, for example, that all-important collaboration just can’t happen.

Some companies are already forging ahead with a more holistic approach to digital engagement. One such is Starbucks, which recently appointed Adam Brotman to the newly-created role of Chief Digital Officer to handle this. Under his remit fall a wide range of digital projects, including digital marketing, social media, e-commerce, Wi-Fi and emerging in-store technologies – pretty much encompassing all the digital touchpoints of the typical Starbucks customer.

Also pioneering in its approach to the digital customer journey is cosmetics brand Sephora, currently blazing a trail by bringing its disparate channel strategies together to create a more holistic experience. For Sephora, the customer journey flows fluidly from in-store to online and across devices, each complementing and optimising the other.

What’s next for digital customer engagement?

While Starbucks already has its Chief Digital Officer in place, we might well see increasing numbers of companies creating new roles to oversee and unify the relationship between customer and brand along the pathway. Thinking big, this person might be charged with bridging the gap between marketing, sales, customer service and technology, with social media marketing activity used throughout to create seamless engagement.

Fourteen reputable judges allocate the awards based on creative genius, and the ability of a campaign to capitalise on Facebook’s potential to capture the world’s imagination. Studio Awards are focused on the best use of creative work on a brand’s own Facebook Page, rather than Facebook apps or sponsored ads.

Explains Mark D’Arcy, director of global creative solutions at Facebook: “The Blue Award is a way of showing a piece of work independent of whether it was just good. Did it tip the direction in what they’re doing?”

Having been seriously impressed by the work of 360i and Draftfcb New York for Oreo last year, we were excited to learn that the campaign won Facebook’s Blue Award, the highest honour bestowed upon a campaign in the Studio Awards.

You may remember Oreo’s The Daily Twist campaign, for which 100 pieces of work were put out via Facebook over 100 days, chiming with the brand’s centenary celebrations.

One can imagine the conversation that Oreo might have had with its agencies in the early stages of developing The Daily Twist. Would anybody be surprised if Oreo had questioned the possibility of putting out 100 pieces of consistently great work that would actually engage people over as sustained a period as 100 days?

Speculation aside, The Oreo Daily Twist campaign nailed its objective, weaving together global celebrations, current affairs and cultural diversity all while successfully keeping Oreo’s playful branding front of mind.

Cast your mind back to the final ‘Twist’, crowdsourced in Times Square to then be produced live by a pop-up agency and projected onto a collosal Times Square billboard. Now that’s what we call a truly cross-channel campaign.

As well as its achingly simple yet brilliant creative execution (making Oreo cookies the star of the show), this campaign scored points for tapping into the cultural zeitgeist.

“It’s a brilliant piece of creative and [gay rights] was a hot topic during that time. But it’s a cookie. That’s cultural timing meets really smart creative”, said Studio Awards judge Rob Feakins, chief creative officer and president at Publicis Kaplan Thaler.

Oreo’s marketers and agencies? Smart cookies.

FPR’s Final Thought:

Devising Facebook marketing campaign creative that times so perfectly with cultural events isn’t easy. Often, the number of legal loopholes that must be jumped through make it impossible to strike while the iron is hot. Meanwhile, some brands have struck the wrong chord by aligning with controversial events –even Oreo’s Gay Pride ‘Twist’ was deemed problematic by some at the time. Yet with compelling creative and an appealing theme, like Oreo’s, there is huge potential to create and steer interesting conversations.

By now, you are probably aware of the launch of Pinterest business pages, including new terms of service for companies wanting to use the site commercially. Chances are that you have also created a dedicated business account for this purpose.

Assuming that you’ve got this far and then hit a plateau in terms of taking your Pinterest marketing any further (don’t worry, you’re not alone), here are three ways to appeal specifically to the Pinterest community while promoting your business.

1. Create themed boards

Creativity is at the core of Pinterest marketing, and an effective starting point is to group your product images, or other relevant images, according to themes. Brands doing it right, including Debenhams, have learnt that displaying products around a theme can drive engagement and sales. This is simplest with straightforward product imagery, which can be grouped by colour, design, materials and so on. B2B marketers will need to engage in more acute thinking here, say grouping infographics or industry imagery by topic themes.

Bonus tip: Be sure to include the theme keyword in the board title, board description and pin description to enable people to easily find your pins and improve SEO visibility.

2. Use clear CTAs

Another approach, and one that works particularly well for B2B businesses, is to offer valuable content with a clear call-to-action.

Formats such as whitepapers, reports, case studies and ebooks work well, and will need to be gated with an opt-in form on a landing page.

Create short descriptions about your content on the landing page with clear file images (the cover image of your file). Finally, pin the image to a Pinterest board dedicated to sharing top-class content.

Bonus tip: Design and great copy are both key here. File cover images need to be attractive, and accompanying descriptions and CTAs need to be ultra-compelling.

3. Showcase bestselling products

In our consumer-driven market, popularity sells. Why else would Amazon compile its bestseller lists? Businesses can translate this concept onto Pinterest by highlighting their most popular flagship products.

The key with this approach is to make it instantly clear that these are your winning products. Create a board that is clearly signposted to direct consumers to where they can find your most popular products, or service if appropriate. Then, get pinning, adding images of your bestselling products with thorough descriptions, including prices and, essentially, a clear CTA inviting users to learn more about products or purchase at your website. If the data is available, add rankings to reveal the popularity of each product.

Bonus tips: Pinners are easily turned off by a stale board. Keep it regularly updated and think of it as an in-store shelf, removing products that are out of stock and replacing with fresh new images.

FPR’s final thought:

Naturally, the overall objective of Pinterest activity is to generate leads and sales for your business. Our advice is to take the time to build a loyal audience before leaping in with the hard sell. People are on Pinterest primarily to consume and share images, with shopping a close second according to recent stats. Invest in sharing quality, attractive content on a regular basis before embarking on product pinning.

Several new pieces of research and expert opinion suggest that promoted tweets can have highly favourable benefits.

Attendees at ad:tech San Francisco 2013, in particular those at a session entitled “Social ad crash course: How to create great Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn campaigns”, learnt how to really drive engagement levels on the three major social channels.

A key takeaway from the session was that using promoted tweets on Twitter can significantly strengthen a variety of brand metrics.

Porsche was cited by the panel of industry experts as a prime example of successfully harnessing promoted tweets, specifically with a campaign for its 911 model. Porsche compared promoted tweets to non-promoted tweets throughout the Twitter push, finding the former to be 300% more effective.

You might be reading this and thinking, ‘that’s all well and good for a huge, slick brand like Porsche, but does it apply to my marketing efforts?’

Porsche’s findings are compounded, however, by data gathered by the Nielsen Brand Effect for Twitter, a collaboration between Twitter and Nielsen to determine how promoted tweets impact brand metrics.

The results are worth a browse, but assuming that you’re pressed for time, the three key findings are:

1) Promoted Tweets drive a 22% stronger message association – Twitter added on its blog that while promoted tweets are priced on a cost-per-engagement-basis, users don’t necessarily have to engage with a promoted tweet for advertsiers to reap rewards.

2) Multiple exposures to promoted tweets boost brand favourability by 10% (suggesting that an ‘always-on’ promoted tweet strategy offers the most bang for your buck)

3) Engagement with promoted tweets drives brand favourability by 30% and increases purchase intent by 53% (revealing the importance of crafting compelling tweets to drive engagement).

Speaking at ad:tech, Dan Beltramo, executive VP, product leadership at Nielsen, said: “Promoted tweets drive strong message association. The brand lift is amplified with promoted tweets.”

Another member of the panel, social business consultant Gretchen Fox, highlighted the three core aspects of any successful social media campaign: targeting the audience, connecting with the audience and converting the audience into consumers.

As well as reiterating the importance of understanding where to find you audience, Fox also advised thinking about how people use your product or service, suggesting that brands should “use content in a similar way to how people use your product”.

Speakers at the session also spoke about the importance of nailing the use of hashtags and links to encourage conversations between consumers and brands, paving the way for deeper relationships.

“People usually click on the first hashtag or the first link in a post on Twitter,” added Fox, suggesting the care that needs to go into constructing effective tweets, whether promoted or not.

To set the record straight on some of the higher profile pranks of 2013, no, YouTube didn’t really shut down to entries to review its all time “winner”. And with its promise to harness a “15 million scento-byte database of smells from around the world…with an elegant integration”, Google was clearly pitching at the World’s Most Gullible with its Google Nose hoax.

Our personal favourite of the April Fool’s social media campaigns was JetBlue Airways’ playful and rewarding approach to the holiday. Announcing to its Facebook community that “April’s No Fool”, JetBlue offered all those flying with the airline on 1 April with the first name April, a JetBlue credit equal to the value of the flight.

What made this holiday campaign stand out was not only the way that JetBlue chose to communicate its offer – with an eyecatching, well-designed status update creative – but also its use of supporting communication activity.

Firstly, the status update announcement linked back to the company’s corporate BlueTales blog for further information. Leveraging the company blog was a nice tactic, sparing the Facebook post itself from becoming too copy-heavy, and guiding people along a content-rich online journey to a JetBlue-owned destination. Here, we learnt that JetBlue’s Director of Media Relations is herself blessed with the moniker April Dinwoodie (I still haven’t quite worked out if this is part of the joke!). Rounded off with “This year, April gets the last laugh”, this is engaging, well crafted copy.

Futhermore, JetBlue took pains to directly respond to the inevitable flurry of comments and questions using Facebook’s reply feature. This was done with consistency and character throughout…community managers, take note.

If you were too busy working to surf the internet on 1 April 2013, enjoy a round-up of this year’s tomfoolery here.

Vine wins vs Vine fails 

For examples of what works and what irks, take a look at Econsultancy’s pick of branded Vine highs and lows.

Our favourite Vine has to be Doritos’ simple yet effective looping clip of the Mariachi band from their current campaign. Inviting their community to guess the name of the song being played, it ticks all the boxes of good Vining. Firstly, it uses one continuous looping shot. It may be a personal thing, but I find this far easier on the eye than shot-heavy clips. What’s more, single looping shots are more memorable as they don’t ask too much of the already content-overloaded consumer. Secondly, by asking a question and offering an Easter prize incentive, this Vine invites interaction and engagement, which is crucial to social media activity irrespective of channel.

An emotional connection 

It’s an odd phenomenon, but watching something on repeat tends to drive a deeper emotional connection with viewers. True, if this is isn’t something you wanted to see even once, like Tyra Banks throwing a faux hissy fit , this can serve to only compound your irritation. But with a superb creative execution, Vine’s looping format can be incredibly compelling.

This is already having an impact on news content, and we’d place money on marketing creative types scratching their heads as to how to create that killer piece of bitesize content. The jury is still out, however, on Vine for film trailers, as trialled in the new Wolverine campaign.

And the updates begin…

As expected, Vine is not resting at video clips within tweets. It is now possible to embed Vine posts elsewhere on the web. You can do this either through a post’s page on vine.co, or simply by using the mobile app. The move means that you’ll be able to share your own posts on your company blog, for example, as well as posts by others (provided they have already been shared outside of Vine.co). It’s an exciting update, which offers potential for Vines to reach a wider audience.

FPR’s final thought 

It’s very early days for Vine marketing, but there is certainly potential there for brands to spin a story in a new and exciting way, particularly now the new sharing feature has come into effect. Expect to see many more campaigns creeping into Vine territory, and remember – there’s no shame in waiting to learn from a few others’ mistakes before jumping on the bandwagon.

In its defence, Facebook reacted by saying that the changes were made to prevent its users’ news feeds from clogging up with unwanted spam. The new algorithm, Facebook claimed, would offer more regular suggested posts from brands than people hadn’t ‘liked’.

Hmmm. So instead of being spammed by businesses that they had voluntarily agreed to receive messages from in their news feed, Facebook users would now be spammed by paying businesses with messages that they hadn’t opted in to receive. Hardly an upgrade to first class user experience, yet another nice little earner for Facebook.

A summary of the rather lacking explanation from Facebook can be seen here:

Fresh fuel was added to the fire yesterday, as Christian Hernandez, UK and pan-European director, Facebook, told Marketing magazine that user experience and engagement were the key drivers of the algorithm change, not the “monetisation component”.

Countering the mounting debate over its motives, Facebook has argued that the median reach of company pages has not in fact changed, while spam complaints and stories hidden by users have fallen significantly.

And the story does not end here. Upcoming changes to the News Feed will potentially mean that businesses will need to spend more to achieve the same level of visibility as before on Facebook. Again, Facebook assures us that the changes are not for “commercial reasons”.

Clearly, Facebook has a responsibility to tend to the needs of its devoted user base, and it is ultimately in brands’ favour to keep the Facebook community a happy, engaged one. Yet even the less cynical amongst us might be starting to suspect broadly commercial motives being discussed during brainstorming sessions at Facebook HQ.

More interesting, perhaps, is the fact that Twitter’s mobile users are more likely to be active, engaged users and therefore a more receptive audience for brand messaging than desktop tweeters.

Guy Yalif, head of global product marketing, Twitter, told attendees at MediaPost’s Social insider summit that 200 million people now log in to Twitter at least twice a month. Of those, 120 million (60%) do so at least once using a mobile device. What’s more, within that 60% sits a “large chunk” who access Twitter primarily via mobile.

Yalif said: “ Mobile users are the core of our platform…they’re the future of our platform, and are more engaged day in, day out, which creates many opportunities for us as marketers”.

Of the Twitter users who access the service primarily via mobile, let’s call them the Mobile Twitterati, this group is 86% more likely to log in several times throughout the day (Source: Compete).

For advertisers, this represents an important opportunity to engage with people on the move, at several connection points throughout their day. Yalif pointed to a clever use of Twitter marketing to capitalise on mobile users by Starbucks. A UK branch of the coffee giant used Twitter to promote a “Frappuccino Happy Hour”. This created a 70% surge in people tweeting about visiting the store.

Think of the captive commuter audience, eager to distract themselves from their dull, confined, and quite likely delayed journey. Also, think of the youth market. The same survey by Compete found that 18-34 year olds are 21% more likely to log in to Twitter primarily via mobile.

Statistics like this have a major impact on marketers. They suggest that mobile targeting should be a priority when developing Twitter Ad campaigns. Twitter advises targeting messages by device, and creating bespoke mobile content that’s easy for users to interact with on the move. Links to sites within tweets should also be optimised for mobile, to create a seamless user experience that will keep the Mobile Twitterati engaged with your brand throughout their day.

Over to you

Have you adapted your Twitter marketing strategy to appeal to mobile users?

The first feature to be rolled out from Pinterest Web Analytics lets brands see how many people have pinned from a site, how many views each pin has, and how many users have visited a site directly from Pinterest – presented visually (natch) in the form of graphs and grids.

Available free from this week, any company with a verified website can start making use of the tool immediately. To verify your company website, simply follow the automatic verification process on Pinterest. While there, you’ll also be invited to try out Pinterest’s new look. The redesign is clearly in early stages, and still needs some ironing out, but it pays to be ahead of the curve in case of mass migration to the new look site.

As well as encouraging high quality content, the roll out of analytics tools represents the next step up the monetisation ladder for Pinterest. Despite lacking revenue, the site has been valued at $2.5 billion following eyewatering investment of $200 million last month.

There can be little doubt that the future is bright for Pinterest, perfectly capturing the zeitgeist for content sharing as it does. The site has already demonstrated its potential as a powerful marketing tool for businesses. In little over a year, Pinterest has surpassed Twitter, StumbleUpon, Bing and even Google in terms of referral traffic, according to online sharing service Shareaholic.

Furthermore, Pinterest users don’t rest at just ogling pictures. Indeed they are 10% more likely to go on to purchase than traffic referred from elsewhere (source: e-commerce platform Shopify).

Just last month, Pinterest founder Ben Silberman told the Wall Street Journal of his intentions to monetise the network.

While the site doesn’t currently have paid advertising in place, it is now looking into potential advertising systems and it’s only a matter of time before an ad model is in place.

In the meantime, keep an eye on Pinterest’s updated site for business owners and marketers, gather inspiration from early case studies, and consider how to pin for your business.