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Sprotts Lindsay McShane receives SSHRC grant to examine the role of chatbots in customer experience - Sprott School of Business Skip to main content

Lindsay McShane, associate professor of marketing at Carleton Universitys Sprott School of Business, has been awarded the Explore Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) in the June 2022 competition to deepen our understanding of the role of chatbots.

Companies are increasingly using chatbots as a way to manage their online service interactions with consumers and their incorporation represents a significant cost savings for the company. Yet, current research indicates that 87% of consumers prefer interacting with live agents.

Lindsays research project, Chatbot or Live Agent? The Effects of Relational Value Threat on Consumer Receptivity to Chatbots, aims to address this gap by developing a more clear and systematic understanding of consumers' responses to chatbots and how these reactions shape their relationship with a company. Emerging research on consumers reactions to chatbots examines the issue primarily from the perspective that chatbot receptiveness is shaped by how efficiently consumers can achieve their service encounter goals. Instead, this research will examine the potentially critical role of how such encounters influence the extent to which consumers feel valued and respected by the company.

SSHRCs Explore Grants are part of their Institutional Grants that provide support to help Canadian postsecondary institutions fund small-scale research and research-related activities by their faculty and students in the social sciences and humanities. They are intended to assist in strengthening research excellence in the social sciences and humanities areas of Canadian postsecondary institutions.

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Sprott's Lindsay McShane receives SSHRC grant to examine the role of chatbots in customer experience - Sprott School of Business - Carleton University

Have you got into rising social app BeReal as yet?

If so, youre not alone, with the app now reportedly up to 10 million daily active users, rising from just 10,000 a little over a year ago.

The trending app of the moment, BeReal sends out a prompt to all users at a random time each day, which asks people to share a photo of what theyre doing, right there and then, with a 2-minute time limit to post an update.

The app is being touted as the anti-Instagram, with the focus on real, unedited everyday life, as opposed to airbrushed, polished IG lifestyle scenes.

As described by BeReal:

No filters. No followers. Just friends, sharing with each other. On BeReal, you discover your friends' real lives and get closer to them.

That approach is clearly resonating, so much so that other apps are now looking to replicate its core tools, with Instagram currently working on a new Candid feature which looks very similar to the BeReal UI.

Its interesting to note the growth of the app, and the popularity of its real life approach, which shows that people may well have had enough of unrealistic depictions of peoples chosen persona and image online.

Which is a key point of note when youre looking at peoples social media accounts, youre essentially viewing a highlight reel of their life, which excludes the lows and negatives, and accentuates what that person wants you to see. That can lead to negative self-evaluation, and subsequent mental health impacts. But with the most popular celebrities sharing overly airbrushed, hyper-real images of themselves online, that then leads to new trends in representation, and showcasing your ideal image.

You can see, then, why BeReal is gaining traction, with these immediate, everyday images providing a more relatable representation of real life, which can actually help to build community and connection, as opposed to followings online.

But are there brand and marketing opportunities in the app?

Some brands are experimenting with BeReal, like Chipotle, which has been using the app to share exclusive promotional codes.

As explained by Fast Company:

When Chipotle joined BeReal in April (one of the first major brands to do so), it shared reusable promo codes in its posts for a week. The first 100 people to use the promo would receive a free entree. Those codes were regularly redeemed in less than a minute.

That, of course, could be novelty value, but its an interesting use of the format to entice engagement, which could point to possible marketing approaches via creative use cases.

Maybe, users will be open to such, if they dont intrude too much on the user experience, and it could be a good way to enhance connection and community.

Other brands are using the app to provide behind-the-scenes content, and insights into how they go about their business, while some are also testing out variable approaches to product previews and offers, based on BeReals limited time window approach.

There are no doubt creative considerations here - and at 10 million users, and growing, you can bet that more brands are paying attention, and are considering what they might be able to do to lean into this steadily growing shift.

Its worth noting that BeReal doesnt allowformal advertising at this stage, but that could also be on the cards in future, as the app continues to scale and looks to build a more sustainable business model.

But then again, a larger concern is that BeReals core appeal is very limited, and that it could easily be replicated by other apps.

Again, Instagram is already doing this, and you can expect other apps to follow suit, as they work to dilute competitor differentiation, and stop their users from downloading another app.

That approach, whether you like it or not, has proven effective, and as BeReal becomes more of a competitor for attention, more apps are going to try and use their scale to blunt the platform before it gets too big.

It remains to be seen whether BeReal can become a truly significant competitor in the space, but 10 million users is significant, and its worth, at the least, considering how it might fit into a more creative marketing approach, as an experiment moving forward.

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BeReal Rises to 10 Million Daily Active Users - Social Media Today

Looking for ways to refine your Twitter marketing approach heading into the holiday season?

This will help the team from Twitter Businessrecently hosted a Twitter Space on how to make best use of Twitter ads, in which they highlighted a range of tips based on data, and the experience of Twitters internal promotions team.

You can listen to a replay of the discussion, hosted by Twitter SMB Content Manager Krista Doyle, and featuring Twitter Senior Account Managers Sal Mattos and Isioma Odita, here, but in this post, well take a look at some of the key points raised which could help in your tweet marketing journey.

First off, Twitter advises that brands should stay one step ahead by maintaining awareness of key events and/or occasions that are coming up.

Every year, Twitter publishes a major events calendar to help with this, and it can be a key guiding document to help ensure that you dont miss out on any tie-in opportunities that can help to maximize your tweet performance.

The real-time nature of the tweet feed lends itself to these types of timely, trending discussions, and it can be a great way to maximize your brand messaging, in alignment with usage habits.

In addition to this, Twitter advises that you should look into trending hashtags to get involved in the broader conversation, while you can also use Twitter polls to prompt related discussion and engagement within your brand community.

For events that are annual, check out the top Tweets from the previous year's hashtag for inspiration.

Twitter also highlights the value of visual assets, which can help your tweets stand out in the fast-moving tweet stream.

Its important to include visuals that are eye-catching and highlight your product or key message.Incorporating visuals that fit well with the event, occasion, or trend youre connecting to will help tie your campaign together.

That advice goes for every social network, with video and GIFs outperforming static images in most respects. But the key point is that you need to consider your visual aspects, which will give you more opportunity to maximize your messaging over basic text messages.

In terms of video, Twitter advises that the sweet spot for video creative on the platform is 6 to 15 seconds.

Twitter also notes that concise tweets tend to perform best for brands (between 50-100 characters).

That wont be universally true, and really, the ideal tweet length is the exact amount of characters and/or words you need to communicate your key message. But if you can, keep it brief, and prompt users to get in touch for more.

Twitter also highlights the importance of an effective CTA in your tweets, as well as variable creative elements:

Make sure to have a call to action or ask a question so the audience knows what you are trying to get them to do. During your campaign, we recommend using 3-12 unique creative assets to prevent creative wear-out with your audience.

On ad performance specifically, Twitter says that advertisers shouldnt make any changes to their ads within the first five daysof a campaign.

Thatll enable Twitters system to efficiently calibrate your ads via the learning period, in which Twitters ad delivery system is measuring user response and performance, in order to optimize targeting.

And when you do update your ads, Twitter says that marketers should seek to make all of their desired changes at once, then let the campaign sit for another 3-4 days to understand the impact before making any additional updates.

These are some helpful notes, which will each contribute to greater Twitter ads success. Though it is worth noting that these are not rules, as such, as you may well violate some of these guidelines and see great performance. But as general guidance, based on past performance, these are key advisory tips to keep in mind.

You can check out a full recap, and listen to the Spaces recording, here.

Link:
Twitter Provides New Tweet Ad Tips Ahead of the Holiday Marketing Push - Social Media Today

These days when people think of influencers, their thoughts immediately jump to TikTok or Instagram socialites, championing a variety of consumer products. But the fact is, business-to-business influencers have been present in marketing for longer than their business-to-consumer counterparts and may be even more critical to the success of B2B brands.

Historically, influencers in a B2B capacity were networkers who sat on boards across numerous firms, and streamlined introductions between different organizations. That is still true to this day, but it has been expanded to include thought leaders leveraging their social-media following to influence corporate and small-to-medium-size audiences in purchasing new products or discovering new services. In addition, B2B influencers streamline a brands ability to reach new audiences, thus increasing brand awareness and propelling a business positioning as an industry leader.

Primarily, B2B influencers reside on four main platforms: Linkedin, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok, and each platform has a different style of content that supports different marketing functions. For example, Linkedin and Twitter offer more content geared toward thought leadership and innovation, through articles, static posts or tweets. TikTok, meanwhile, prioritizes content toward corporate culture, comedy and enterprise entertainment through short videos. And YouTube is oriented more toward education and skill development in long-form tutorials.

The B2B influencer marketing vertical has the potential to generate $11.7 billion in revenuebythe end of 2022, with more than 38% of B2B companies currently exploring influencer marketing as a new lead-generation avenue. Influencer marketing is set to become a mainstream approach for B2B companies that are looking to tap into the power of social media and content marketing.

Lets see how some B2B brands used these influencer platforms successfully.

Humor and engagementVimeo accelerated its lead generation through influencer marketing on TikTok by leveraging creators who speak to a broad corporate American audience. Creators generated humorous content about corporate work culture during the work-from-home period that was relatable to everyone living in a post-COVID world.

More brands should take advantage of TikToks ability to gain higher user engagement per post by creating short, catchy videos that showcase their organizations culture, encouraging audiences to connect with their brands on a more personal level.

Amazon Web Services utilized influencers in the back-end developer niche to increase the awareness and utility of its tech stack, using tweets and retweets surrounding updates to its infrastructure. Twitter offers brands a medium for higher output frequency without diluting their core messaging, and influencers play a role in amplifying that form of communication even further.

Intuit Quickbooks launched a YouTube content series with influencers in the accounting niche as hosts, educating SMB audiences on accounting basics related to running and growing their businesses. In the U.S., if someone were to search on YouTube for the phrases financial projections or breakeven cost, theyll be greeted with Quickbooks tutorials. YouTube is one of the most powerful marketing channels for brands in B2B and B2C, especially if it pertains to a very niche subject matter.

Further, brands are beginning to expand their SEO initiatives from solely digital on Google to social and digital SEO through YouTube. Media consumption habits have changed quite dramatically over the last few years, with one-third of internet users having watched a tutorial or how-to video every week this year so far. This in turn presents a perfect opportunity for brands to provide resources and value through influencers on YouTube to introduce new products or services. The reason: 90% of people say they discover new brands or products on YouTube.

Although platforms have different consumption habits, there is some overlap between them. Creators from TikTok or YouTube reshare content on Linkedin or Twitter to further amplify their reach and ensure that qualified audiences or decision makers are able to discover this content effectively. Many B2B influencers utilize a method of cross-platform content sharing to test and learn about which content first performs best on a broad social media platform, and then to reshare the content with B2B-qualified audiences.

LinkedIn, with around 61 million senior-level influencers and 40 million decision-makers from all different industries, provides the unique opportunity for influencers to directly impact the audience responsible for making major company decisions. Reportedly, 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn; in addition, 90% of B2B marketers claim to have reduced cost-per-lead using LinkedIn lead-generation forms.

Honing your influencer contentWith such a high opportunity for conversion, brands and influencers need to ensure their content is perfect for their target audience before sharing it. Its recommended that companies test their content across other platforms, first to solidify the best approach and then to share it on LinkedIn to reach their desired target audience.

A great example of an influencer who leverages this form of cross media amplification is Tim Davidson, a B2B marketing influencer who creates entertaining content surrounding B2B sales and marketing processes.

In parallel to brands leveraging external B2B influencers, many are prioritizing internal influencer campaigns by placing an emphasis on their employees and customers. Alex Su, head of community development at Ironclad, is a great example of how an internal influencer plays a role in B2B marketing and community development. His content provides entertaining outlooks on corporate law, speaking to an audience with a legal background but in a casual way. The value he provides is entertainment, which in turn keeps himself and Ironclad top of mind in association with legal SaaS.

B2B sales and lead generation is never an impulse lead-buying scenario as we might see with B2C markets. So brands need to leverage influencers to maintain awareness, provide value and be memorable, in order for target cohorts to know who to turn to when the opportunity arises.

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Why B2B influencers are finding success on social platforms - AdAge.com

CORPUS CHRISTI, TX The Veterans Services and Social Services Offices at 602 N. Staples in the CCRTA Staples Street Center will be closed to walk-in clients until further notice. The offices will remain open remotely and can be reached at:

Veterans Services: (361-888-0820) Social Services: (361-888-0837)

CCRTA reports that at approximately 8:15 a.m., the fire alarms went off throughout the Corpus Christi Regional Transportation Authority Staples Street Center at 602 N. Staples Street. All CCRTA employees and tenants promptly evacuated the building safely and securely.

There was a small fire within a storage room on the second floor of the building. The sprinkler system went off in the area of the fire. A CCRTA employee pulled the fire alarm, and all alarms and systems were activated within the building.

The Corpus Christi Fire Department (CCFD) arrived promptly. CCFD and CCRTAs Safety and Security Department are currently evaluating the area of the fire and potential damage within the building.

All CCRTA employees, building tenants, and individuals have secured their essential items and have cleared the building.

CCRTAs Board of Directors Committee Meetings scheduled for today have been canceled. CCRTAs Customer Service Center is closed.

Individuals needing assistance can contact CCRTA through ccrta.org or via social media.

For more information, please contact: Rita Patrick, CCRTA Marketing Director, rpatrick@ccrta.org or 361- 500-2905

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Veterans Services and Social Services Offices Closed | City of Corpus Christi - Corpus Christi