Welcome to CentreRing

Facebook Offers: Bringing Retail and Social a Little Closer Together!

Posted On: May 16, 2012

Facebook recently unleashed it’s latest and greatest feature: Offers. This is a real game-changer for any business with a product or service to sell.

Using the new Offers feature, brands can publish limited time coupons and exclusive deals to their Facebook fans – which easy for customers to share and to redeem!

Simple and Effective

The process is very easy for brands: Decide what your offer is, how many you have to give away, and when it will expire. If you wish, you can even post a thumbnail image and include fine print!

When your fans click to redeem the offer on your page, or in their newsfeed, an email with the offer is sent to the fan’s email address listed on the account with details to redeem. It also makes a post to their newsfeed, so their friends can see the offer they have redeemed.

Best Practices

According to Facebook, the best types of offers include:

  • Discounts bigger than 20%, Free offers
  • Simple redemption details
  • Reasonable expiration date

In addition, we recommend ensuring your staff is aware of the offer & redemption details to avoid confusion and frustration.

Long-Term … (Continued) Read More...
Posted In: Advertising,Facebook,Marketing,Social Media,Web
0 Comments.

The Second Screen Dilemma

Posted On: April 30, 2012

The way people consume media has been shifting dramatically in the past few years. A Nielsen survey conducted in fourth-quarter 2011 found that 45% of Americans who owned tablets used them daily while watching TV. Time Warner learned that its 20-something audience was switching media 27 times per hour -  now that’s channel surfing at a whole new level!

Viewers are increasingly more likely to browse the web on a mobile device during commercial breaks, and in some cases, during the main event!

Smart marketers have realised this new trend is not taking away from the viewing experience, it’s actually enhancing it.

How to engage in the Digital Age

Similar to creating mobile sites, a few things should be considered when branching into mobile platforms:

Ease of use: Make it easy to download, with an intuitive interface and simple instructions. This is especially important if you want people to use your app again.

Multi-Platform accessibility: iOS, Android, Blackberry….the list goes on. Ensure your app or mobile site is compatible with various devices, and that the experience is the same for each.

Quality of content: No matter … (Continued) Read More...

Posted In: Marketing,Multimedia,Technology,Web
0 Comments.

Lessons learned from Kony 2012

Posted On: March 22, 2012

Kony 2012. It’s the latest viral campaign to take over the web. If you thought the Middle Eastern Protests of 2011 was huge, Kony 2012 is growing to be massive on that scale.

Quick overview of the campaign: Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, has been kidnapping children and turning them into war soldiers. The Kony 2012 movement, run by the not-for-profit organization, Invisible Children, wants to stop it by taking to the web in a social media campaign to raise awareness and hopefully drive action. The 30-minute Kony 2012 video asks people to contact key influencers, and to become involved by plastering the world with his image on April 20.

We’re not here to support or criticize the campaign. This article is going to focus on how this campaign managed to spread so effectively.

KONY 2012 from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.

One simple, clear message is conveyed

“Make him famous.” That’s the message and goal. It’s easy to understand and measure. Once he’s famous, the next phase of their cause occurs. Everything they communicate stems from this message and is consistent throughout the campaign. … (Continued) Read More...

Posted In: Facebook,Marketing,Social Media,Twitter,Web
0 Comments.

The evolution of Santa

Posted On: March 21, 2012

This may seem like an odd time of year to be talking about the holiday season (since it feels like it was just yesterday), but in fact, this is just the start of the planning process that outstanding holiday programs require.

Step into any shopping centre during the holiday season, and you’ll witness the right of passage for many children: sitting on Santa’s knee and getting their photo taken. Not much has changed over the years: wait in line, sit on Santa’s lap, smile and get your photo taken. That is until this year, with malls like Vaughn Mills and Centerpoint Mall adding a new dimension to their Santa experiences.

In an interview with Global TV, Eleni Koukoulidis, Director of Marketing for Centerpoint Mall tells us, “It’s always a challenge and that’s where the thinking outside the box comes in. We want to distinguish ourselves from everybody else.”

Expanding Santa’s Fan Club

Santa has for many years been used to attract people into the door to shop. Using these different types of Santa experiences, malls can broaden their demographic of shoppers. No longer are they only targeting families with … (Continued) Read More...

Posted In: Advertising,Marketing,Technology
0 Comments.

Facebook Timeline for Brands: What you need to know

Posted On: March 13, 2012

Facebook’s recent announcement about the release of Timeline has businesses everywhere buzzing. The new changes allow for fantastic branding opportunities and new ways to engage your fans.

Timeline has been available for months now to regular users, but brands were kept waiting for their turn to join the party. On March 30th, Timeline will be switched on for everyone (ready or not), so now is the time to start making updates to your Facebook Page. You can preview any pages you currently admin at www.facebook.com/pages/status

Timeline – Overall Layout and Function

Timeline is the new standardized look for Facebook Pages. This two-column chronological layout is very much a literal timeline, with a large image spanning the top, known as a cover photo. An excellent example of a brand utilizing the timeline features is the Wal-Mart page. You can click back in time and learn about the history of the company and see important milestones along the way. It will be interesting to see how brands use this in innovative and engaging ways.

Cover Photo

Now you can showcase your brand with a prominent photo at the top of … (Continued) Read More...

Posted In: Advertising,Facebook,Marketing,Social Media
0 Comments.

Premium Advertising Options Coming Soon to Facebook

Posted On: March 13, 2012

Facebook recently unveiled a number of changes to its platform, featuring Timeline, along with numerous new advertising options. We understand the goal of these new advertising options is for Facebook to not only to make more money, but to increase their valuation prior to going public.

Image from Facebook's Guide to Premium on Facebook

Most of the new advertising options won’t apply to most businesses on Facebook due to minimum spending requirements (upwards of $25,000 per month), but we’re going to outline the new ad formats that users will start seeing, and that larger advertisers will begin considering in their ad mix.

Marketplace Ads

These are the Facebook ads many companies are familiar with. The format of these ads hasn’t changed. These self-serve ads are targeted to users based on the things they like, and are viewable on the right hand side of the Timeline. With the new ad options for big spenders, it may be more difficult to break through the clutter, as these ads only offer a simple image with a few lines of text.

New Premium Ads

Depending on the size of your brand … (Continued) Read More...

Posted In: Advertising,Facebook,Marketing,Social Media
0 Comments.

Life in 140 Characters

Posted On: February 28, 2012

Writing for the Internet takes real skill, and this couldn’t be more true than with the microblogging platform Twitter. It’s a cut throat platform which limits every post to 140 characters, not a single letter more AND this includes punctuation. If you go over, your message will be cut short, possibly leaving you with incomplete sentences, words or even links.

Writing a 140 character message that contains all of the necessary information is a real skill. Each tweet must be clear, concise and captivating, otherwise it’s just more noise that will echo through the coliseum of the Internet. Many tweets are overlooked or completely dismissed because they fail in this regard, especially when there are millions of users writing tweets about how they, “totally had a greet time OMG!! #twitterpollution” (that typo is intentional for the sake of authenticity).

#Winning

If you’re lucky enough to have your Tweet read by someone, you now have approximately 10 seconds of their attention, where they can take action in up to four ways:

1. Actually read the tweet.
2. Follow or unfollow your feed.
3. Care enough to click the link, photo or … (Continued) Read More...

Posted In: Social Media,Twitter
0 Comments.

Why Retailers should care about Pinterest

Posted On: February 23, 2012

In the past few months, Pinterest has quickly become the hottest new trend for online sharing. Of course, there is a new trend a day in the social sphere, but this one – in particular – looks to have a lot of potential and more importantly, SUPPORT. Last week our team attended Social Media Week Toronto and Pinterest was mentioned in almost every session we attended.

Pinterest – A Quick Overview

Pinterest is a self-described online pin board. Users can “pin” up photos and videos they like, and also “repin” items from other people’s boards. At its core, Pinterest is about visually sharing the things you love with people you know across the web. Much like Twitter, you can follow others and they can follow you to keep informed of the things you like!

The best way to organize your boards is to create themes. Themes can be anything, for example: foods, styles, destinations or holidays. Each of the pins on your board would fall under a theme. American Eagle does a great job using boards themed to different Spring Break destinations. They have a nice mix of products and … (Continued) Read More...

Posted In: Social Media,Web
1 Comment.