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While it's still a way off being the next transformative platform, the use of VR is growing, and Facebook is leading the pack, which could set the company up for significant success with the next generation of consumers.

Indeed, amid the COVID-19 lockdowns, Facebook has been struggling to meet demand for new Oculus Quest headsets. That, in part, is due to production line impacts caused by COVID-19, but interest is also beyond what many had expected. Which is why this new update from Facebook-owned Oculus is worthy of note.

This week, Oculus is celebrating the one-year anniversary of the Oculus Quest, the company's most successful VR headset to date, and to mark the occasion, Oculus has outlined some key achievements, and announced a range of new features.

First off, Oculus underlines the fact that consumer interest in VR is rising:

"People have spent more than $100M on Quest content, [and]during last months Facebook: Game Developers Showcase,we announced that more than 20 titles have surpassed the $1M revenue mark on Quest alone."

Oculus also notes that more than ten of its top titles have generated over $2M in revenue, while one -SUPERHOT VR- has surpassed 2 million copies sold worldwide.

If you wanted some context on the growth of VR, that's an indicator. Again, it may not seem like the next big thing as yet, but interest in VR is very clearly on the rise.

As it looks to take the platform to the next level, accessibility, and useability considerations are key, and Facebook made a significant advance on this front last year when it announced its new hand-tracking capacity, which enables Oculus users to interact with virtual environments without the need for gloves or controllers.

Now, hand-tracking is being made more generally available within the Oculus developer stream.

"With the next Quest software update starting this week, were moving [hand tracking]out of the Experimental Features section and into general release, and well begin accepting third-party titles that include hand tracking to the Oculus Store on May 28."

This is significant, in that it will mean that not only are VR headsets now becoming more self-contained, without the need for connected PCs, but also easier to use, which will boost their appeal more broadly.

That's particularly relevant for VR games - and also worth noting, Facebook acquired leading VR game developer Sanzaru Games back in February.

But social connectivity remains central to Facebook's mission, and it's also looking at the social media elements of the new VR space. It's working on a new integration with dedicated VR groups on Facebook, in order to facilitate connection with other Oculus users.

"Starting this week, were testing the ability for people to share to Facebook Groups under their Oculus username. This will let people connect with other Oculus users on Facebook to swap stories and share their VR exploits."

In addition to this - and in what may become an increasingly relevant use case, given the rising shift to remote work -Oculus is also working on two new elements to facilitate business collaboration within VR.

Immersedis a tool that enables users to collaborate in the VR space, with multi-screen presentation options, where "colleagues can teleport into the same space to collaborate, and even whiteboard together". Spatial, meanwhile,is a VR/AR collaboration platform, which enables people to work together in VR "as if they were in the same room".

Given the expected shift towards more remote work in the wake of the COVID-19 lockdowns, with the forced action on this front highlighting what's possible, you can imagine that as VR tech evolves, these types of virtual collaboration tools will become increasingly popular. And we're still only in the early stages of VR in this context, with the systems and presentation options set to advance significantly from here.

Really, consumer VR options overall are still in their infancy, and the fact that we're seeing such significant interest and take-up, even with limited VR applications on offer, is a strong indicator of the potential in the medium.

In future, that will lead to a range of new opportunities, both in terms of virtual collaboration, and, even more notably, in marketing and outreach.

This may not be a major consideration for businesses as yet, but it's definitely worth keeping tabs on the evolving VR space, and considering the potential for how it could be used to connect with the next generation.

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Oculus Outlines New VR Tools to Mark the 1-Year Anniversary of Quest - Including New Links to Facebook - Social Media Today

According to MRF, the MRF board has put processes in place to ensure the continuity, which has been built over the past few months, continues. "There is no disputing that our world is rapidly changing at a level we've never seen before," says Koster.

"The COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide lockdown that came into effect has brought with it great concern and uncertainty," adds Koster.

According to MRF, the pilot fieldwork on MAPS began in December 2019 and was completed successfully by mid-February 2020.

After commencing the actual fieldwork in March 2020, it became clear that COVID-19 would make it impossible to continue with face-to-face interviewing, halting the process.

"The MRF and its technical committee, supported by Plus 94 Research, are currently evaluating contingency plans and alternative solutions that will allow us to continue data collection during lockdown and the anticipated subsequent period of restricted mobility and social interaction," says Koster. "The discussions are being guided by governmental regulations, without jeopardising research quality and data integrity."

"Research has always been there to help our customers deal with uncertainty," saysSifiso Falala, CEO of PLUS 94 Research. "COVID-19 has exponentially increased uncertainties faced by businesses and made any long term planning appear at best speculative."

"Consumers are being jump-started into making quick decisions, and for some, even into reviewing their value system. For this reason, a comprehensive tracking survey such as MAPS is more essential than ever before," adds Falala.

"Unlike in past years when methodology if chosen correctly, was pretty much background noise we are seeing an evolution of the importance of methodological adaptation. The discussion of methods used to gather the data will be in the foreground and as exciting as the expected insights themselves," Falala says.

According to MRF, with the country currently in Level 4 of lockdown, the industry is going to be in a restricted environment for some time to come. The orgainisation says that many businesses now more than ever require sound research and consumer insights to guide their decision making.

"At the MRF, we believe that the need for MAPS is more critical than ever and we're working tirelessly with our partners and members to make MAPS a reality. The industry will be kept appraised of any updates as we progress through these uncertain times," concludes Koster.

For more information, visitwww.mrfsa.org.za. You can also follow the MRF on Facebook or on Twitter.

MRF MAPS updates 2020 The Marketing and Research Foundation MAPS South Africa MAPS consumer insights service 2020

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MRF assures the continuation of MAPS during lockdown - Media Update

The COVID-19 crisis is far from over, but governments everywhere appear to have either relaxed lockdown parameters or will do so soon. The curve may have been flattened, but there will be a greater risk now of being infected.

Containing COVID-19 and restoring our economies requires not just good policy decisions and medical advice; it also needs continued compliance with the recommended behavioural changes that in many ways go against social and cultural conventions. Daunting as they may seem, the drastic changes in behaviour being called for can indeed be brought about. The science of social marketing uses known marketing principles and behaviour change theory to influence peoples behaviour for the benefit of both the target audience and of society. Public health, safety and environmental concerns are some of the areas where social marketing can have huge impact.

The Health Belief Model (HBM), developed by Irwin M. Rosenstock others suggests that a persons health-related behaviours ultimately stem from the desire to avoid illness. The two most important constructs of the model are: perceived benefits the effectiveness of actions available to reduce the threat of the disease, and perceived barriers the obstacles to performing a recommended health action. The model also recognises the importance of cues to action or triggers which set into motion the process of adopting the desired behaviours. These cues, typically, are emotional, not just informative or educational. The HBM presumes that knowledge or education alone is grossly insufficient to change a persons behaviour. Cigarette sales, for example did not decline significantly for years despite the ills of smoking having been widely publicised.

India is one of the few countries that appears to have recognised the power of deliberately crafted emotive cues to action such as the Prime Ministers call for a voluntary Janata Curfew, exhorting citizens to show that they care for themselves and their loved ones, and to display their patriotism. People were asked to stay indoors but, at 5 p.m., to also applaud health-care workers and others who are a part of the pandemic battle. The blend of fear, patriotism and gratitude extolled by the Prime Minister appeared to have been just the right buttons to push and people did stay indoors. Yet at 5 p.m., while many applauded from their balconies, hordes of others congregated in large groups, throwing social distancing to the winds. Fear, patriotism and gratitude, even if they were effective as initiating cues to action, were insufficient to sustain behaviour change and needed to be periodically rekindled. The Prime Minister later called upon citizens to switch off lights at 9 p.m. for 9 minutes on a chosen day and light lamps to go from darkness to hope. As is well known, the number 9 and lighting lamps are powerful positive symbols in India.

In Singapore, the government, perhaps taking a cue, supported an event, Sing Together Singapore. People at home were encouraged to sing as well and wave a torchlight as gratitude for frontline and migrant workers.

Going back to the main constructs of the HBM, to be effective, the social marketing message would present the benefits as applying direct to the individual, not just indirectly to society at large. And, messaging about barriers should not make the change appear too difficult to engage in or make the cost of adopting the behaviours appear too high. Supportive measures should facilitate the adoption of the desired behaviour.

Here is an example to illustrate this. In the 1970s, Bangladesh undertook an ambitious family planning campaign keeping in mind the countrys limited resources. Research showed that while the women were able to readily see the benefits, the men, who were the decision makers at home, could not.

The campaign became successful after social marketers decided to empower women by making female contraceptives available through women rural medical practitioners who made house calls. The marketers also designed a communications programme directed at men highlighting benefits such as better health for their wives, thereby enabling them to look after their husbands and children better.

This writer conducted informal interviews (not scientific by any means) in Chennai to gauge receptivity to recommended behaviours during the pandemic. Here are the findings in relation to some of the recommended behavioural actions and possible messaging and support measures.

Many were not quite convinced of the threat posed by asymptomatic others merely because they were close by. The perceived direct benefits of social distancing were thus moderate at best. Further, one does not have the luxury of observing physical distancing in many situations (especially in densely populated areas). Telling someone to stand away is also difficult because it could be considered rude. Hygiene instructors often ask an audience to colour their hands and then show the imprints they leave everywhere to demonstrate how germs can spread. Would a social marketing campaign that paints a picture of the virus jumping onto you if you are close to an infected person work? This needs to be supported by physical barriers wherever possible to promote social distancing.

The recommendation to hand wash often or use an alcohol-based hand rub was unrealistic for too many people even though they saw the merit in it. The two options have been presented as equivalent, but from a behavioural change point of view they are not. Even those who had fairly easy access to soap and washing facilities found it rather inconvenient to interrupt whatever they were doing to frequently head to a hand wash station. If alcohol-based hand rubs were available within arms reach, people had no need to interrupt their work and drying their hands was not a problem since they would swiftly dry on their own. This suggests high payoffs from a decision by governments to focus on increasing the supply of hand rubs and absorbing or highly subsidising the costs of making hand rub bottles readily available to supplement hand washing with soap and water.

We know that shame is a powerful disincentive to undesirable behaviour. This writer has considerable experience in projects to make villages open defecation free through the use of Community-led Total Sanitation, a technique that liberally and successfully uses naming and shaming to achieve its goals. It is not hard to visualise messaging that shows bystanders strongly disapproving of those who do not comply with the COVID-19 recommendations.

A well-crafted social marketing campaign would help address the COVID-19 crisis and set foundations that will help ameliorate the adverse consequences of future pandemics. Let us build policy from science in the effort to save lives and to put the local and global economies back on track.

S.N. Srikanth is Chairman and Managing Director of the Hauer-Diana Group of Companies of India

Link:
The pandemic and the challenge of behaviour change - The Hindu

As part of its resources for small business owners struggling with the impacts of COVID-19, The DEC Network hosts Fridays Are for Founders, a weekly virtual forum that provides practical answers to real-time questions from D-FW business leaders about surviving and thriving during unprecedented times. In this video, The DECs Trey Bowles and Delanie Majors talk to Marty Martinez, founder of Dallas-based digital marketing agency Social Revolt, who shares key ideas around best practices for small business looking to leverage social media and more to grow.

Martinez says he first started to feel the rumblings of what would become the coronavirus pandemic in December, but the seriousness of the matter hit him right along with the rest of us.

I had this spidey sense you know, at the back of my neck I had a feeling that I was going to need to mitigate the fallout from either lost clients or people sort of backing out or businesses asking to put pause on contracts and things like that, he says.

First, Martinez personally reached out to each one of Social Revolts clients to let them know he was committed to helping them ride out the coming storm. Then he looked at the companys financials and made tough decisions for the greater good. It was at that point that he put together a 30-60-90 plan.

As Social Revolt moves past the 60-day mark and into phase three of that plan, Martinez says the company has been able to achieve great results for its clients who are also trying to respond to their customers. Here are his top four tips when youre looking to reach yours:

1. Learn your customers pain points and then figure out how you can address those concerns and create peace of mind for them. Its really just asking yourself how have your customers changed as a result of [COVID-19] and how can you then use everything you have and the products and services you provide in a more efficient and effective way, Martinez says.

2. Use data to decide what to do next. We can guess and estimate all we want what is in the mind of our customer, but theres no better resource than from the customer or previous customer directly, Martinez says. An easy way to do this, he says, is to use Survey Monkey to email customers and ask very intentional questions. Use the answers to refine your services and messaging.

3. Reach customers where they are. Understanding customer segments is of the utmost importance, Martinez says. Create target personas and understand what social media they use. Let those personas determine the platforms for and the frequency of your marketing messages.

4. Embrace pay-to-play. You simply cannot rely on social medias organic reach, Martinez says. To be effective, even the best strategy and most creative content requires an engagement strategy centered around paid advertising. Martinez emphasizes that when done properly a small investment can yield big results.

Originally posted here:
How to make the most of your small business' social media marketing plan - The Dallas Morning News

media updates Nakedi Phala spoke to Petrumarie Jacobs, client and brand experience manager at amaSocial, about the important dos and donts of marketing brands on social media platforms.

What do you need to include in your Page Bio in order to sell your brand?

Your page needs to be a follower magnet. To do that, a quick summary about your brand is kind of a big deal. Remember, people find your business through searches, therefore, you need to ensure that you use SEO friendly keywords and accompany it with great visuals and your website link, as well as contact details. Dont include an office number if your company is not channelling calls via Zoiper or Linphone during lockdown.

Set your brand logo as the profile image and choose a cover image that links to your tactical marketing activities or email marketing banners. Also, ensure that each profile and cover image is optimised for each platform. A few brands have recently been using Zoom meeting screenshots as their covers, which is a very good way to show that you regularly update your page and could be the brand theyve been looking for.

Why does a brand need to link its marketing content that is shared on its social media platforms?

Omni-channel marketing is key to surviving the changing media landscape. With more and more strategies shifting to a digital-first approach, backlinking ensures that your organic rankings make up for the ad spend you need to apply in other spaces. A good SEO strategy will include backlinks on social media posts [which link back] to your blogs or specific landing pages. People find you via searches or a recommendation, and alignment across each platform may enable users to find out more about your brand through a link click.

If your aim is to drive website traffic in order for people to contact you, buy your product or subscribe to your service, include those links because you never know who needs your solution at the time of scrolling.

At amaSocial, we have found that placing your full link to a post generates more link clicks than a shortened one. Even though a shortened link looks sleek, we live in a time where people do not click any link they see; they have more time to consume digital content and your copy needs to create an expectation that wont let them click away within seconds.

We havent come across a brand that just wanted to post pretty content without a link or a contact method. If this was their only objective, they probably dont exist anymore. You post with the intention to gain a customer base by raising awareness of your brand or generating engagement Likes, comments and shares dont pay the bills. It is the call to action or the click that leads to an opportunity to build a relationship with your brand.

Is it better to share a lot of content or a limited amount of content on these platforms, and why?

Social media has become the go-to marketing tool for brands during lockdown. With audiences stuck indoors, traditional forms of advertising just arent cutting it. However, audiences have more time than ever to scroll through their social feeds. When it comes to posting content online, it is vital to ask yourself if the content you are posting is relevant, or if you are posting content for the sake of maintaining an online presence.

Knowing when to post is key to building a social media strategy. At amaSocial, we use an Hourly Insights feature to pin-point the exact times and days when brand engagement is high. This enables you to decide on the frequency of posting or the exact times engaging in genuine conversations with your audience in real-time.

In order to understand the keywords people are using in relation to your brand, we offer a social cloud that visually displays the popular buzzwords. The amplification of the words, hashtags or @handles depicts how many times they were mentioned within a specified time frame. At a single glance, you are able to tailor your content to be in line with what your community wants to know and, better yet, when they want to know it!

The social cloud also allows you to be informed about the conversations surrounding your brand. Responding to these conversations will demonstrate that your business is in-tune with what is happening in your industry, aware of trends and ready to engage with issues your audience is facing at the moment.

What kind of research should a brand consider conducting before placing itself on social media?You might know the platforms your audience usually spend time on, but these are unusual times. This means that youll see some shifts in the platforms customers are using, as well as changes in the times they use the different apps. For example, since lockdown began and people have been isolated from one another, messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have increased in usage, and video chat apps like Zoom, Houseparty and TikTok have spiked.

Look at your industry and identify the brands in your direct market environment. Pop their keywords into a social media monitoring system, like amaSocial, and see the results of the conversations surrounding those brand mentions. With effective data management, you are able to extract key topics and questions that need to be answered.

The opportunity lies in addressing the questions people have if they are wanting to or making use of your competitors products or services. You will also be able to see the social media platforms your potential audience uses and what type of content works with a particular audience.

Think about yourself and ask: Would I like to see my brand in my newsfeed?. Some platforms may have a limited number of users, but high-quality engagements emerge from there. Social media takes time and a genuine tone of voice and dedication will reap great results.

Should a marketer, at some point, consider social media monitoring services? How will these monitoring services help a marketer?

If you want to stay relevant in a time of uncertainty, a social media monitoring service will definitely help you measure your brands success, as well as identify gaps in communication efforts. With the rise of e-commerce, people are looking to social media when a delivery is taking longer than usual or to find out if other users are having the same questions they have.

Opportunities are lost when brands dont reach out in their post comment sections or respond to mentions without a tag, which will pop up in the community managers notifications. Therefore, you want to look at those mentions outside of your pages and find your audience in spaces and scenarios with tailored responses instead of automated chats.Placing your brand on social media is something that every business should consider. What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments section below.

Digital marketing Social media marketing Traditional marketing Brand engagement amaSocial

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The do's and don'ts of marketing your brand on social media - Media Update