Last night, Blake Lawrence made his debut on Big Red Wrap Up. Big Red Wrap Up

Blake was a guest on the show, and spent some time discussing Hurrdat Social Media, as well as Husker football. He will also be working on the show each week on a segment called ‘In The Hudl’ using the Hudl system to breakdown a play from each game of the season. is a local sports show in Lincoln, dedicated to Nebraska football.

Take a look (Blake comes on at the 24:00 mark)

Hey friends. Just observed some pretty intelligent marketing by JobsinSocial.com, although you might call it risque.

You know those Facebook ads on the side of your profile everyday? Mine are always related to social media marketing. Check out the four ads that loaded tonight:

Which one of those ads attracted your attention first? And why? I’m guessing the top image.

Sex Sells

It’s an age old saying that ‘sex sells’, and it couldn’t be more obvious than in this line up. Jobs in Social has no reason to use this image in their marketing, and it has nothing to do with their product offering. But they do understand the speed of social media and the need to attract attention quickly. Every time a consumer clicks on an item on Facebook, these ads re-load. Jobs in Social knew they would have to have an image that would catch the consumer’s eye, and encourage him or her to click through to their website. They went with the sex appeal of this photo.

Amateur Photos Work Best

But that’s not all. This is not a professional photo. It’s not staged, and it looks like what we’re used to seeing on Facebook: amateur photos. When advertisements looks natural, we are less likely to ignore them, because it doesn’t scream Ad! (source)

Overall, I say Jobs in Social is achieving one thing: attention. But not much more. I clicked through the ad, found out the content wasn’t relevant to me, and clicked away immediately. What does this look like on their ad stats? A click-thru. Which is ‘success’ according to common online measurements. But was it really successful? You be the judge.

At Hurrdat we find ourselves continuously introduced to different industries and the key to our success in the social media realm is our research.  We are constantly educated about the markets we are involved in, as well as keeping up on all of the trends occurring in social media.  In the past few weeks we have been focusing on the insurance industry and we have gained significant insight on this industry and identified broader social media trends for business marketing.

Insurance agencies have started to target their marketing to a younger generation with funny commercials and branded campaigns like Allstate’s “Mayhem” and Geiko’s “Could 15 minutes really save you 15% or more on car insurance…” series.  More importantly, they are also interacting with their customers via Facebook and Twitter.  It is more and more common for companies to end commercials with the tag line, “Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.” This is not merely a way to get you to look at their logo one final time rather it is a way to satisfy customer needs.

Hurrdat has found that almost all (75%) of the insurance agencies, big and small, were focused on using social media to address specific issues and customer needs.  For example, Traveler’s Insurance tweets several times a week addressing specific user questions or problems.  Not only is this happening on a national brand scale, but regional and small insurance carriers are actively engaged in social media as well.  These social media outlets provide an easy way for insurance agencies to propose situations that require insurance which educates their following, and target market, so they know there is a solution to the problem.

Why would this information matter to an industry other than insurance you ask?  Every industry can use social media as a way of informing customers about company news, jobs, promotions, and relevant issues.  We, the customer, feel a strong connection with a big brand when they respond to our question with a mention or retweet.  Smaller companies are able to expose potential clients to their name brand and company news through social media.  It’s a beneficial process for companies and customers to interact through social media and so I ask:  Have you interacted with at least one customer today?

[AUSTIN]