Facebook Is Your Life

Join the live stream of thinkDoubleClick 2013

Wildfire invites you to join Google and top agencies, advertisers and publishers for the annual thinkDoubleClick event. thinkDoubleClick, formerly known as DoubleClick Insights, is an annual meeting of senior executives from agencies, advertisers and publishers to discuss industry trends and the state of the digital marketing ecosystem. Watch live on YouTube as digital media visionaries from some of the world’s most influential companies engage in spirited and eye-opening conversations about:

Cutting edge digital trends that are having an instant impact on today’s business
How brands are incorporating social into the marketing mix, and the ongoing debate over the value and best practices of paid, owned and earned media
Innovative technologies that are changing the way advertisers use video and mobile in cross-channel campaigns.

Join the conversation in real time on DoubleClick’s YouTube channel or post your comments on Twitter with the mention of @DoubleClick and the hashtag #thinkDCLK. Be part of one of the most important marketing forums of the year, so register now.

Wildfire by Google - Enterprise-class social marketing

Remember the day your company created a handful of social accounts to “see how this social thing worked?” And when you realized you should also be creating custom content for each of your brands and regions? And how about when you moved beyond PTAT and +1’s and started talking leads and sales instead?

In less time than it took Psy to topple Justin Bieber, social marketing has transitioned from being managed by a “lone wolf” with little oversight, to becoming a core part of every marketing campaign. As we’ve seen, the opportunities to increase sales, extend your reach and be more relevant to your customers on social are enormous, but so is the complexity. The average enterprise brand has almost a dozen people working on their social media alone, and over 170 social properties (Altimeter). We have many clients managing large teams of globally distributed users across hundreds or even thousands of social properties. It can be overwhelming, inefficient and risky to build your brand on social without a technology platform that unites your social marketing across activities, teams and properties. That’s where we can help, with Wildfire Social Marketing for Enterprises.

Though you may best know us as one of the pioneers in Facebook social promotions, we've undergone a significant transformation since early 2011. We’ve been busy building an enterprise-class Social Marketing Suite that serves some of the largest brands in the world -- 31 out of the top 50 global brands, to be precise. We’ve always built our product for the largest and most sophisticated marketers, and now as part of Google, we’re more agile, more secure, more scalable and more global than ever before.

The Wildfire Social Marketing Suite has all the integrated tools you need (Ads, Pages, Promotions, Analytics and Messages) to find new customers, build your brand and drive revenues on social. Underlying these tools are a set of governance, collaboration, reporting and support capabilities that we’ve specifically created for today’s social-ized global enterprise.

Governance and Compliance

Custom teams : A flexible and customizable role-based approach to creating custom work groups. Your users can be part of multiple teams, with different levels of access per team
Custom workflows : Automated approval processes so that the right people in your organization approve every post
Rules-based post moderation : Pre-defined rules automatically trigger an action (such as flagging, deletion or routing) when certain words are posted on your social properties by your consumers
Audit logs: Records all your users’ activities within your organization to track back unauthorized or compromising behavior

Collaboration and Efficiency

Batch uploader : Allows efficient collaboration on, and scheduling, of all upcoming messages in a shared spreadsheet, which can be uploaded at once for instant scheduling
Central messages calendar : A shared calendar for all your brand’s users and teams to see which messages are scheduled to be sent. View by social property and by originating team (i.e. the ACME brand team)
Keyword filtering and auto-routing : Scales your marketing and customer service teams by auto-routing incoming messages based on keywords. If someone’s crying for help, get them to customer service pronto. If someone’s making a product recommendation, get that to your development team without having to manually route it.

Custom Reporting

Role-specific editable reports : Enables customization of your reporting for any member of your organization - easily create high level aggregate reporting for your VP of Marketing, or let each of your social managers drill down to the details to see property or campaign level performance.

Strategic Advice

Customized account strategy : We’ve worked with thousands of clients - more than any other vendor - and we put that experience to good use every day. We go beyond advising on individual campaigns (although we think we do that pretty well). We’ll work with your team on an ongoing basis to implement an organizational structure, messaging strategy and integrated marketing plan that supports your business goals.

Social marketing is serious business, but that doesn’t mean it can’t also be fun. With Wildfire’s technology and support, we’ll do the heavy lifting for your enterprise so you can focus on creating authentic connections with your customers, and providing real value for your brand.

Download our white paper to find out more, or give us a call . We’d love to talk.

#CincodeMaya celebrates social media marketing all month long!

Great social media marketing never stops, and neither do all the learning and best practice tips you can pick up about it. This month, we’re embracing education with a little celebration...of Cinco de Mayo, with a Wildfire twist.

If you’re scratching your head about something social, we can help. Ask us your most perplexing questions, and every Friday in May our resident social marketing expert, Maya Grinberg, will post a new video answering one of the top five. Five Fridays. Five videos. Cinco de Maya!

Submit your questions here, maybe yours will be one of the chosen inquiries that gets a follow up video next week!

We built this campaign using our Social Gallery template, which is designed to make it super simple to engage with fans and followers. You can use it to post videos and do Q&As with customers in real time.

Want to see more ways you can keep your social going strong all year round? Check out our 12 Months of Social for new ideas every month.

Wildfire explores the "New Normal" at iStrategy Miami conference

One of the best parts of being a social marketing technology provider and thought leader is hearing what’s on the mind of our customers, partners and other marketing professionals. Last week, we traveled to Miami, Florida for iStrategy’s latest Global Digital Marketing Conference, a gathering of more than 350 senior brand marketers to discuss the latest innovations in digital and social marketing technology and strategy.

During the conference, Wildfire spoke about how the digital-social revolution has delivered to us a “New Normal,” where technology has empowered consumers by giving them access to information. This phenomenon has fundamentally changed how brands drive value from marketing, and was frequently discussed throughout the conference.

The New Normal has been driven in large part by Generation C, an emerging class of consumers who demonstrate core behaviors that begin with the letter C: they are connected, and constantly curating and creating content. These consumers’ voices are more powerful than ever before; they decide who and what they trust -- and as a result, they are in control of the conversation around your brand.

Brands that are successful in the New Normal use social and digital to create interactive experiences and transform their businesses. Here are three key concepts Wildfire presented at iStrategy to help you do that:

Ditch the pitch. Connected consumers are savvy: because information is always at their fingertips, they don’t care if your brand is better, faster, cheaper or stronger. They aren’t interested in a sales pitch, they are interested in what is interesting to them: “I’ll be interested if you are interesting.”

Pique Generation C’s interest by building a social strategy that shows your brand is listening to their needs, wants, expectations and preferences. Gen C is interested in brand experiences that they relate to, connect with and believe in. Your job, then, is to understand your audience’s passions, preferences and desires; then create experiences around your brand and mission that demonstrate these things.

Execute your strategy with an orchestrated approach to reach connected consumers on multiple screens and multiple social networks. In today’s always-on, multi-screen world, people consume your content in many ways and from many devices. Whether it’s a retail store, website, YouTube Brand Channel, Pinterest page, or on a tablet, PC or smartphone, you must be where your consumers are. Your digital-social strategy should incorporate all channels and networks to engage your consumers wherever they are, on whatever screen they’re on.

Mike Nabasny, Wildfire’s Head of Midwest Sales, talks about engaging Generation C.

Procter & Gamble is an example of a brand that’s been wildly successful at applying these concepts and connecting with its portion of of the Gen C audience. About a year ago, P&G launched its “Thank You, Mom” campaign in conjunction with its sponsorship of the London Olympics.

The campaign included 35 P&G brands sponsoring 150 Olympic athletes, and the effort was tied around interactive content on YouTube, Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Pinterest. It was one of the most ambitious integrated marketing campaigns to date.

In an interview with AdAge last summer, P&G’s Global Brand Building Officer, Mark Pritchard, estimated that the company would bring in $500 million in incremental revenue as a result of the “Thank You, Mom.” The campaign also deepened P&G’s connection with millions of social followers; it was so popular with Facebook fans, in fact, that it spawned its own Facebook page. “Thank You, Mom” continues to provide a significant source of social engagement for P&G’s brand.

How are you engaging consumers in the New Normal? Leave us a note about your strategy below. We love to hear from you!

The Wildfire Team

A New Turn for Wildfire Promotions

Five years ago, we were a team of two, working out of our apartment and creating a way for businesses to run promotions on social media. Today we’re a team of hundreds, and we offer businesses a suite of products to help them manage all of their social media. It’s been a learning process for us.

We want to do all we can to poise our customers for success when they begin using Wildfire. So that we can better focus on doing that, we’ve decided that we’ll be retiring our Basic, Standard, and Premium promotions after June 30th. We’ll continue to offer promotions as part of our Social Marketing Suite. We understand that some of you will still want to run standalone promotions, so we’re glad to know that there are other companies dedicated to helping you do this. But we’ll be sad to see you go. Of course, we’d love for you to stay in the Wildfire and Google family, so if you want to learn more about the Wildfire Suite, then please give us a call at 888-274-0929.

For more specifics, here are answers to questions you might have about our transition:

Can I create a new Basic, Standard, or Premium promotion before June 30th?

Yes! If you already have an account with Wildfire, you can build, publish, and run promotions up until June 30th. Your campaign just needs to be complete before June 30th.

What if I have a campaign in progress now that ends before June 30th? Will it keep running?

Yes, your campaign will continue to run like normal.

What should I do about the lead data in my account?

All customers with promotions that are completed by June 30th will be able to access and export their lead data until July 31st. If you’ve run a Basic promotion, we’ll upgrade your account so that you can export your leads. If you don’t know how to export your leads, you can check it out here.

Can I sign up for a new Wildfire account in Promotions? Can I invite someone to join my account?

While you won’t be able to create a new account in Promotions, you’re welcome to continue using your existing account to build promotions until June 30th. You can also invite other members to your account until June 30th.

Who should I talk to if I want to learn about the Wildfire platform?

If you’re interested in learning about the Wildfire Social Marketing Suite, please give our sales team a call at 888-274-0929 or visit our website at www.wildfireapp.com.

Can I keep my same Wildfire account if I decide to start using the Wildfire Suite?

Yes, you can keep your existing account if you’d like to start using the Suite. Just mention that you’d like to do so when you speak with a member of our sales team.

What if I’m an existing Suite client? Will I still be able to run promotions?

Absolutely. Promotions will still be available as part of your subscription.

To those of you who were among our first customers using Promotion Builder, we want to say thank you so much for believing in us and helping us get to where we are today. We hope you choose to continue to work with us in the future.

Calling All Marketers: What Makes You Tick When You’re Off the Clock?

Marketers are busy people with a variety of interests and inspirations outside the office. But often times, these things get lost amidst work demands and the hustle and bustle of today’s always-on world.

At Wildfire, we think your interests and inspirations are meant to be celebrated. With Spring’s recent arrival – and the arrival of longer, brighter days – we think now is the perfect time to celebrate.

During the month of April, as part of Wildfire’s 12 Months of Social, we’re inviting you share your interests and inspirations with us, through photos. We used our popular Instagram template to build a special page to house your submissions in a gallery that’s viewable on Facebook, microsite and mobile devices.

How can you share your story? It’s easy. Think about what interests, inspires or otherwise gets your through your day as a marketer. Then follow three simple steps:

(1) Take a photo and upload it to Instagram.

(2) Caption your photo and fill in the blank, “I’m a marketer, I’m a _________.”

(3) Add the hashtag #thismarketinglife.

By selecting “Share,” your photo will automatically be pulled into Wildfire’s This Marketing Life gallery. Ready to get started? Click here. And be sure to revisit the gallery throughout the month to see your photo featured among others’ -- we hope you’ll find it inspiring!

Visit the photo stream first if you need some inspiration! We can already tell you, there are a lot of caffeine fiends in our audience!

Wildfire Supports YouTube One Channel

For brand marketers, YouTube, with more than 800 million users, is an incredibly powerful way to engage consumers through the magic of sight, sound, and motion. Wildfire is proud to work with YouTube as a Google Engagement Solutions Developer, helping brands tell their unique stories through video. Today we’re pleased to announce our support for the new YouTube One Channel design.

The new design introduces key changes that give marketers some great new features:

Designed for mobile

Mobile now makes up 25% of YouTube’s total views, and the YouTube iOS app has been downloaded more than 100 million times. Whether your consumers access your channel on their desktop, tablet or mobile device, they’ll see a beautifully rendered and perfectly scaled version of your brand channel page. This includes a new big cover image, which YouTube calls Channel Art.

Curated video library

“Shelves” of videos let you showcase and organize your channel’s content however you want. Create and edit “Sections” of content, so you can group your videos by most recent, most popular, or by function, such as product demos or customer support videos.

A customized welcome

You’ll be able to customize your featured video to subscribers vs non-subscribers to your channel. Subscribers get a view that helps them discover what’s new and what to watch next on your channel. For unsubscribed viewers, you can now publish a new channel trailer, which lets you highlight your channel’s value and encourage subscribing.

Guide integration with channels

The Guide is now integrated into channel pages. This means that your full channel (not just the Feed) will appear whenever a subscriber clicks on your channel in their Guide.

When will the changes take effect?

Through May 15, you’ll have the opportunity to switch your channel over to the new design. On May 15, if you have not published a custom-built page, with what YouTube refers to as “gadgets”, you will be automatically switched over. If you have built a custom page, then you’ll have till June 19 to re-build your page to fit the new One Channel specifications. But if you’ve built your custom page with Wildfire, don’t worry! Our pages were built from day one to conform to the One Channel specifications, so they’ll render perfectly in the new format.

The One Channel update is a great step forward for brands to create more customized and tailored experiences for their viewers. At Wildfire, we’re excited to bring our expertise in creating custom social pages to help brands who want to build even further engagement with their YouTube audience, such as through video contests, live streaming or built-in social sharing functionality.

Contact us if you want to learn more about how we can help save you time and money building viral and interactive experiences on your YouTube One Channel page.