Archive for the ‘The Social Media Diaries’ Category

The Social Media Diaries | The Power of the Facebook Group

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Facebook groups range from the heart warming to the down right absurd.There are groups to bring back retired chocolate bars, prevent bus services being cancelled, share stories of being a student, to commiserate the engagement of Russell Brand and on a more serious note to show support for charities; no matter your hobbies, passion, religion or opinions I imagine that there would be a Facebook group out there for you.

Although the number of groups on Facebook is reaching silly proportions and in many instances people join them only to never contribute anything ever there are the rare occasions when a Facebook group amounts to something more than just a giggle; actually doing a good deed or gaining momentum to the point where it brings around action.

One of the first Facebook groups that quickly became a national campaign was one set up to ‘bring back the Wispa’ chocolate bar. After several thousand fans joining the Facebook group and several other online petitions cropping up the people at Cadbury finally took notice. Cadbury spokesman Tony Bilsborough said: “We have noticed the web interest for some time and the consumer passion has undeniably swayed our opinion to relaunch Wispa” (BBC), demonstrating that Facebook groups have significant power not only for the consumer but also the corporations, think how much money Cadbury saved by not having to invest in research and development?

Rage Against the Machine for Christmas No. 1 is probably one of the most publicised Facebook groups so far. The group called for fans to buy RATM’s 1992 single “Killing in the Name Of” in a bid to challenge the X Factors dominance of the Christmas number one. As a result of this online campaign “Killing In The Name Of” secured the Christmas number one spot beating X Factor winner Joe McElderry and to date the number of Facebook users supporting the campaign has reached over 1.5 million. Amazing as it may seem that this small group page went on to be a highly debated topic, featured in the 10 o’clock news and powerful enough to keep XFactor off the most coveted No. 1 spot of the year, it is no real surprise. The very nature of Facebook is centred upon sharing and the entire set up of the website is dedicated to everyone knowing what everyone else is doing, therefore the potential for snowballing viral campaigns are very high.

Someone else looking to utilise the wild fire effect of Facebook is the administrator of the “Camera Found at Edinburgh Hogmanay Street Party 2009/2010″ group, a group set up with the sole intention of finding the owner of a lost camera using the pictures on memory card to identify the true owner. This is not a one off either, there are several similar altruistic groups across Facebook helping people locate their lost items. A brilliant and very kind use for a Facebook group, I guess the majority of lost and found items end up on EBay, and one which relies very heavily upon the ‘word of mouth’ sharing aspect of Facebook- after all you don’t exactly search for “lost camera” on Facebook do you? What is so nice about this is the element of community, people joining a group to help someone find their camera and amongst the 80,000 revellers that attended the Edinburgh Hogmanay party they were able to.

Whether it’s reuniting a camera with its owner, sharing your views with the world or campaigning for a company to act in a certain way Facebook groups have incredible potential. There is, of course, power in numbers and where else to find numbers than on one of the most popular social networks in the world Facebook.

Tags: facebook groups

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User generated content- friend or foe?

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

User generated content refers to content on a website or similar form of media which has been produced, written or compiled by the users of that media/website. The greatest example of user generated content is Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that is produced, maintained and regulated by its users; it is the fifth most popular website in the world (Econsultancy) and although it has been subject to several practical jokes it still remains a trusted source of knowledge and information.

The various ways a brand can integrate user generated content within their online presence are;

Web Forum
Branded social network
Open comments on the blog
Review section
Video/photo galleries
Brand wiki

Web Forum

A forum is a place for people to talk and discuss various matters. They are commonly characterised by topic and are created by fans of that particular topic/product/service. Brands can use a forum as a place to talk with and connect customers encouraging them to discuss the product/service and post questions giving the brand a means of providing additional customer service and technical support.

Examples of brands using forums; BT, Nintendo and Joomla!

Social network

Social networks are the likes of Facebook and Bebo where friends can connect with one another the platforms allowing them to easily talk online, share content and generally interact with other users of the website including brands. A growing trend is the establishment of brand run social networks where fans of that brand can connect with the company and other fans allowing them to share experiences, keep up to date with the brand, get exclusive promotions and interact with the people behind the brand. Although creating your own social network gives you greater control and flexibility it is possible to create a similar community on any exisiting social networks; Asos demonstrate both options by having their own community page and a very successful Facebook page with over 170,000 fans.

Examples of company specific social networks; Asos, Reebok andToyota.

Blog

A blog is an online diary or web log, they are increasingly being utilised by businesses to communicate with stakeholders, however, a blog shouldn’t be a one way street it is there to engage users and encourage feedback. Although not entirely user generated a blog is an ideal place to encourage customer feedback, ideas and conversation and in that sense it is a tool for generating user content. For efficient use of commenting facilities minimise the moderation of comments where possible, respond to any comments left and actively invite readers to get involved by posting their thoughts and comments.

Examples of company blogs engaging with readers; Econsultancy, Playstation and Spotify.

Reviews

Many websites, in particular ecommerce sites, are now providing review facilities providing customers with the chance to provide feedback on the product or service that they recieved. User generated reviews and recommendations are one of the most powerful selling tools for any business so having positive reviews posted beside products can play an influential role in the decision making process of a potential customer. There are many ways for reviews to be displayed in a website, with most content managed systems it is fairly simple to turn on a review facility, there are also companies such as Feefo who follow every sale with an email requesting feedback which is then displayed on the website adding further authenticity to the review.

Examples of review facilities; MyWardrobe, American Apparel, First Direct and Comet

Video/Photo galleries

On your website you can provide a gallery displaying videos or photos submitted by customers. A gallery could be used in conjunction with a competition, as part of a review facility or simply to show off the product/service. The benefit of having user generated photos and videos is that it can be used across several channels, within the website, on the social media profiles and on a dedicated YouTube channel for videos.

Examples of user generated galleries; Firebox, Oxo and Asos (again!)

Brand Wiki

A company wiki can be utilised for internal use as an effective and affordable alternative to an intranet. Users create, amend and edit the content within the wiki so its not something a company would want to let loose to the general public but along with being an excellent hub for employees to post information and communicate with one another. Within Wikipedia many larger (or reknowned) companies will have a page, it is impossible to completely control the information posted on the page, however, you can ensure that the information is factual, up to date and non slanderous. For any issues with the company wiki read this blog post.

The Pros and Cons of it all

Using and promoting user generated content is an excellent way to engage with customers and can in many cases be an excellent source of inspiration for improving or marketing your service or product. Further to this user generated content can form an integral part of an advertising and online marketing campaign; many companies including Doritos, TMobile, Asos and Oxo all use customer made videos and photographs in some form of marketing material as a means of selling their products.

Of course whenever a company invites people to generate content they are running the risk of receiving a bit of negative comments, to curb this many opt to moderate comment and reviews facilities ensuring only the ‘good’ ones get through. Doing so can have a negative effect; you run the possibility of no one commenting or alternatively no one trusting the comments being made. Instead of moderating consider allowing negative comments to be posted and read by one ‘n’ all but ensure that you respond to it. By engaging upset customers you are showing that your company accepts its mistakes and seeks to learn from them. Look to BT on Twitter who actively enage with customers having difficulty with their BT service turning a nasty situation into an incredibly positive one.

For any company seeking to encourage user generated content the best course of action is to have a set of moderation guidelines and procedures in the case of negative comments or publicity ensuring that everyone understands how the publicity and comments are to be dealt with.

Tags: blogs, Online Marketing, social media, user generated content

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The Social Media Diaries | Turning a follower into a sale!

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

We are big supporters of social media and its brand building qualities; it is the perfect channel to ‘connect’ with your target audience and push your message. However, once you have your hundreds of followers and fans how do you convert them into a sale? According to a recent publication by MediaPost, at its core social media works best when relying on good old fashioned marketing tactics promotion and customer service.

Your social media campaign should aim to increase brand awareness, drive customers to the website and convert the follower to a sale. The MediaPost article using data published by Razorfish states, “of those who follow a brand on Twitter, for example, 44% said access to exclusive deals is the main reason. And on Facebook and MySpace, 37% cited special deals as the main reason they have “friended” a brand”. As the stats tell us brands must be enticing customers to their websites using promotions and discounts doing so will increase brand interaction and encourage customer loyalty.

Using social media platforms to give customers added value such as insider hints, tips and additional information regarding products can push customers onto your website and help the decision making process. The correlation between such brand engagement and providing above average customer service is high. Big brands such as BT are utilising social media platform Twitter to provide immediate and relevant customer service, e.g. within minutes of a complaint about their service is aired a message is recieved by the complainer asking for contact details with someone dealing with the response as soon as possible saving you the time and effort of phoning and sitting on hold!

Online customer service from BT

However, as we touched up on in our Habitat Getting It Wrong post for a successful online marketing campaign you must strategically plan a course of action. Many businesses and brands may rush into setting up social media profiles on the premise that it will ‘be good for the brand’, however, as this post has hopefully communicated there is more to social media than building brand awareness and that it takes a little more than having a big brand to entice friends/fans/followers to your website to purchase.

Tags: bt, social media, twitter

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Business guide to Twitter list

Monday, November 9th, 2009

Twitter has recently introduced Twitter lists to all their users allowing them to classify (or list) followers in seperate groups.

It is fairly easy to create a group and add people to it, but why the need for it? Well, they are there to enable users to recommend lists of followers for other users to also follow.

So, how can a business use Twitter lists?

Firstly, businesses can create an employee list and encourage all the brand followers to follow the employees also. The benefit? It groups together everyone associated with the brand which makes it easier for customers, fans or stakeholders to follow all the employees of their favourite brand, from a corporate perspective making the employees equally as popular as the company allows the brand message to reach a wider audience and allows the brand personality to shine through, see NME magazines employee list. For larger companies creating numerous employee lists based on geographic location, office location or department will help to put the customer in touch with exactly the people they want to speak to.

Secondly, it can allow businesses to give customers a little bit extra by compiling lists of Twitterers that they feel will be of interest or relevant to the service/product they are buying. For example if you are selling bathroom suites online perhaps you could create a list of decorators or DIY shops that also appear online, a sort of recommended Twitterers almost. The main benefit this could bring is by establishing your Twitter account as a bit of resource for your industry and opens up the possibility of creating relationships with the companies or individuals on the list.

Thirdly, use Twitter lists to manage fans following enabling them to connect with other fans in their geographic area or sharing the same interests. For example the NHL has created NHL fan lists, they did so by send out a tweet to all their followers asking them to tell them what team they supported accompanied by #myfavouritenhlteam. As a result the NHL Twitter account has 20 lists of different fan groups and is in the process of asking Twitter to allow them the ability to have even more. The result being that NHL have turned their Twitter account into a mini social community where fans connect with other fans.

Fourthly, if you are hosting an event or are an events company then the Twitter list can be used to group together attendees of the event, this allows potential attendees to see who will be present and gives those within the list to socialise with one another prior to and after the event itself.

In conclusion there really are many different way a business can utilise the Twitter lists, with a little thought and creativity they can provide benefit to any business and hopefully this blog post gives you a starting point.

Tags: twitter lists

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Measuring your social media return

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

In a survey conducted by Mzinga & Babson Executive Education it was revealed that of the businesses adopting and incorporating social media into their marketing mix only a mere 16% are in fact measuring the ROI from the said social media activity.

This very low figure is no surprise. After all given the varying degrees of expected returns it can be very difficult to accurately measure the success rate of social media.

With all the different types of social media; blogs, Facebook, viral emails, etc and the different returns each can offer, along with a company’s own desired return, things can get a bit complicated. The best course of action when approaching any social media campaign is to plan and establish specific expected ROI’s. For example:

Increase traffic to website
Increase business contacts
Get people talking about the brand
Have people saying positive things about the brand

Traffic

Measuring the audience of your social media campaign or the level of traffic being directed from a particular social media activity is perhaps one of the easiest aspects to measure.

Any standard analytic tool should be able to show the following:

Unique visitors
Page views per visitor
Time spent on site
Frequency of visit
Conversion rate
Bounce rates

…letting you see where your traffic has came from (Facebook, Bebo, corporate blog…), if they are engaging with the website (how high is the bounce rate, are they spending a long time are they returning, etc), and whether the traffic is being converted (are they emailing you, are they going to the contacts page, etc).

Blogging platforms (such as Wordpress) social networks and email marketing software, will also provide you with some form of analytic’s allowing you to see how many people have been exposed to that particular piece of social media.

The value of such quantitative results is of course high, however, it only provides a small snapshot of the full return any social media campaign will offer and provides a starting point for discovering the true ROI of your social media campaign.

Measuring Interaction

Knowing the levels of traffic may be very interesting, however, it doesn’t give much substance. The beauty of social media is that it gets people talking to one another and if you are investing in social media you want to know how well your target market is interacting with your brand on all these various platforms.

Measuring how users interact with your brand can be done in various ways; the most basic, albeit time consuming, way is to simply keep your eyes and ears open.

Of course an indication of the level of interaction on the blog can be established from the number and quality of comments being left- this also applies to social media profiles such as Facebook and similarly a quick search on Twitter will reveal all the various conversations where your brand is mentioned. Twittbeep is a handy tools that alerts you of any mentions of your brand and/or profile within Twitter.

Who is talking about you & what are they saying

Once again this is a case of keeping your ear to the ground.

Using alert tools to view mentions of your brand is an effective way to monitor who is talking about your brand and it gives you the opportunity to respond. Google Alerts is one of the most popular, and free, alert tools available.

In terms of measuring who is talking about you and what they are saying the potential returns are increased brand awareness within your target market and the development of a dialogue with potential or existing customers, a potential by-product is the identification of any issues which may affect company reputation.

Benchmarking your social media campaign is the best method of measuring results. Developing a set of questions relating to the specific returns you expect and then performing a monthly audit willreveal how successful the social media campaign has been in terms of not only quantity but also quality.

Quality over Quantity

Many people tend to be weary of qualitative measurement as opposed to quantitative. Quantitative research produces nice safe numbers that appear to be more trustworthy and reliable, however, people do not know the quality of these nice safe numbers. The phrase “quality over quantity” is very, very true, especially in terms of measuring a social media campaign- or any form of marketing campaign for that matter. Tables and graphs telling you how much traffic has landed on your website from Facebook, Bebo and MySpace can mean nothing; knowing what your audience is saying about your brand and how they are interacting with your brand is without a doubt far more valuable.

So when approaching any social media campaign do not become complacent when measuring- although it appears that around 84% of businesses don’t measure at all anyway! Ensure that along with looking at the figures you perform serious analysis on the quality of the traffic and level of interaction.

Are you interacting with the right market? What are people saying about you, are they saying anything at all about you? If you don’t know the answer to these questions then you don’t know the true return on your social media campaign.

Tags: social media roi

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The social media diaries | Twitter competitions

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

Every week we are starting to businesses grab the Twitter bull by the horns and jump on the wagon, so to speak. One particular marketing ‘novelty’ I keep coming across is the Twitter compeitions.

You could say that Twitter competition began with Ashton Kutcher challenging CNN to become the first profile with a million followers, the reward? Kushtor stated the millionth follower would recieve a copy of Guitar Hero, and both agreed that whoever won would donated 10,000 mosquito bed nets to charity for World Malaria Day.

Although not necessarily a marketing technique that the run of the mill business could employ, this highly publicised competition has still had a desired effect for both parties with CNN now having access to 2.5 million followers and Ashton Kuctcher a massive 3.5 million, showing the full force of Twitter and its possibilities.

An example of a local business utilising Twitter competition to increase brand awareness is Barrhead Travel, they recently ran a competition whereby tweeting #barrheadtravel would place you in the running to win a free holiday from the company. Similarily Dontstayin.com ran a competition offering followers the chance to win tickets to one of their events, all you had to do was talk about it.

Competitions are brilliant, not only are they fun but they give people are reason to do something thus if you plan it properly your competition can have excellent benefits. OF the competitions above both worked very well to increase the followership online and increase brand awareness within the Twitter community, however, competitions can be utilised to achieve a lot more than brand building- it can be a great means of getting customer feedback, getting creative inspiration, generating leads….

Some competitions ideas we would suggest:

Caption competition- get followers to post captions on Twitpic the best one winning the prize

Photography competition- submitting photographs via Twitter using the #hashtag

Write the best short story/poem/reason for winning in 140 characters

Posting a question & getting followers to DM the answer

Invite followers to provide feedback on service/product, randomly select a respondant

Make sure you get it right by talking about the competition, keep it fresh in your followers minds by talking about it, writing about it in a blog and linking to it; people can easily forget without meaning to and being in real time your initial competition announcement will quickly be replaced by another and then another.

Offer a good prize, don’t waste all your hard time and a good compeition idea on a prize that isn’t going to get the Followers salivating over.

Be as honest with your followers as possible, they know what the score is so don’t try and hide your objective of holding the competition- honesty is always the best policy. Speaking of which when it comes to the prize giving, stand true to your word and don’t be a stickler for handing the prize over in a timely manner.

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There’s no ‘we’ in social media

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

When it comes to social media are your employees getting as involved as they could be?

A report published by TechCrunch revealed that research conducted by ÜBERCEO on the worlds largest companys has uncovered that:

- Only two CEOs have Twitter accounts.
- 13 CEOs have LinkedIn profiles, and of those only three have more than 10 connections.
- 81% of CEOs don’t have a personal Facebook page.
- Three quarters of the CEOs have some kind of Wikipedia entry, but nearly a third of those have limited or outdated information.
- Not one Fortune 100 CEO has a blog.

Some people may consider these CEO staying well away from social media is for the best but I would have to disagree, yes social media is not for everyone but the company CEO should be setting an example for the rest of the company and making themselves available online is the new digital equivalent of the open door policy, non? Well its an idea…

Anyway, its not just the responsibility of the CEO, or the marketing department, to get involved with the social media marketing. Employees across the board should be getting involved, not only to bolster the success of a campaign but to put across a strong front. There is nothing more impressive to potential buyers or customers than seeing employees demonstrating an involvement and it can really communicate a solid and reliable image.

One company that has really used their employees enthusiasm to boost their image and reputation is American airline Southwest Airlines, whose impressive social media campaigns are devoutly supported by the employees. From employees posting their own Southwest related videos, responding to customer comments to CEO Gary Kelly openly discussing plans to abandon assigned seating on the company blog (plans which were then quickly dropped after a barrage of comments from customers), the involvement of employees from every department has done nothing but benefit the company.

How Southwest Airlines manages to get employees involved in the online activities of the company in the first place I’m not too sure, the company would like us to believe it is because they have such a close relationship with all employees and the employees really do feel pride in their employers, and I kinda believe them- the social media and marketing is obviously working!

But in all seriousness getting employees involved in your online social activity has to start with them being happy in the first place. From there incentives and even some training, showing them how to use all the various bits and bobs online, could get the ball rolling.

Here are some small ways employees & coworkers can get involved with your company social media:

Contribute to the company blog by writing a post relevant to their specific department and commenting on existing blog posts.

Connect with the company on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, although remember that potential clients will be on the company profile pages so no naughty comments or office gossip, and it is worth remembering that these clients may then go onto employees profiles, seeing pictures of the post boy fat necking a bottle of Buckfast at T in the Park may be somewhat offputting.

Respond to any comments or queries that customers are posting online, again keeping it clean and professional.

Talk about your brand, don’t be scared to say nice things about work on Twitter or Facebook.

Send any offers and exciting news to friends and family, viral marketing on even the smallest scale can have an effect.

Many people may believe that social media is only for the experts which I believe is untrue, it is the experts job to plan and to put it into motion, when you get the full support of the employees then a social media campaign can really come to life.

Tags: marketing, social media, web design

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The Social Media Diaries | Habitat getting it wrong

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

Q. How to get Twitter completely wrong?

A. Use an international conflict for your own benefit.

If you haven’t already heard then you will no doubt be astonished to learn that fashionable furniture gurus Habitat has been utilising the current conflict in Iran for their own benefit on Twitter. Sounds a bit crazy huh? They have in fact been using hashtags such as #Iran and #Mousavi to get their name and products into the hotly debated discussions going on in Twitter about the current issues in Iran.

The company deny that they authorised these tweets, which may be true but it does not excuse them from their lack of respect to what is a serious issue, one which they have blatanly used for spamming purposes. Looking at their history of tweets it is clear to see that Habitat are just big fat spammers, and on this occasion they got it very, very wrong.

In the past Habitat have used top trending topics such as #apple and #iphone linking them to products and pages on the Habitat website that are in no way related to the #hastag. In a sort of apology sort of admission to the #Iran fiasco Habitat stated:

The top ten trending topics were pasted into hashtags without checking with us and apparently without verifying what all of the tags referred to. This was absolutely not authorised by Habitat.

This demonstrates that the company have a complete lack of control over their online activites and have completely been abusing social media tools such as the Trending Topics for their own benefit, and in this instance their arrogance and complete lack of concern has backfired, resulting in outrage across the net.

This debacle highlights the issue of whether businesses should be using social media tools such as Twitter at all. We at 360innovate are firm believers that social media networks can be used for businesses purposes. However, businesses looking to go down that route, who do not seek the use of an agency, should ensure that they think about which social media tools are most suited to your business. In this instance choosing to go onto Twitter was a logical choice for Habitat, many B2C companies are using Twitter very well to connect to their target audience and if well planned relationships can be formed between business and consumer. Habitat failed to achieve this not only by abusing the #hashtags but by misunderstanding what Twitter is all about. Instead of using Twitter as an engaging communication tool Habitat used it as vehicle for self promotion, in the process losing all credibility and the interest of their target market- we really don’t need to be told 5 times about a 20% off sale…

Which leads onto the next point anyone looking to use any form of social media for a specific purpose must really think about what they are hoping to gain and plan how they are going to achieve it. Your business may be on the most talked about social network in town but if your floundering around in the dark you may actually do more harm than good- Habitat being a prime example of this!

Image courtesy of Marketing Pilgrim.

Tags: b2b, habitat, social media, twitter

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Diary of the Twitter Newbies

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

Its been a while since we have put up a post for the Twitter Diaries; with the office being super busy at the mo, Easter weekend and a bout of the chicken pox, we have found it incredibly difficult to not only maintain our Tweeting never mind blog about it.

In the three weeks we have been neglecting the poor Twitter Diaries we have seen considerable increase in our followers, which is very nice, and weird as it sounds but we have also began to feel part of a wee community- does that sound as geeky as I think it does?

Yet when we first started the Twitter Diaries we did it with the business in mind, the business being 360innovate, we wanted to know whether Twitter would bring any benefit to 360innovate. Benefit being brand awareness or leads for example; and although we may have accumulated over 140 followers each has 360innovate benefited at all?

In a word, yes. Admittedly we haven’t had any Twitter users sending us Direct Messages asking for our online media branding services… but we have had some positive results which have the potential of turning into future prospects- you just never know!

We have seen a dramatic increase in the number of traffic coming directly from Twitter to the 360innovate website and blog.
We have identified several conversations and tweets about 360innovate on Twitter, many regarding @johnmcc’s JQuery blog post.
We have been able to communicate with other web design and online marketing agencies in Scotland.
We as professionals have benefited from some very useful advice from some influential people in our field.
We have been kept up to date with business events happening in the local area.
We have been able to share our blog postings to a wider audience.

Whilst you cannot quite measure the success of this in terms of leads and sales, there is no doubt that since beginning the Twitter Diaries there has been a considerable increase in the brand awareness which plays an important part in creating future opportunities.

Moving on to our Twitter tip:

Tip #6

This is perhaps more common sense than a tip as such but if you are using Twitter as a business tool you need to have a ‘Follow Me on Twitter’ link.

If you have a blog ensure that your posts are automatically published on Twitter with a Twitter Feed.

Here’s our stats from this week:

@laurajdavis

Followers 144 (+35)

Following 194

@Pammyweaver

Followers 143 (+28)

Following 187

Keep posted guys…

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Digital Solutions Laid Bare

Monday, March 30th, 2009

Working with a lot of SME’s we understand the challenges facing both online and offline businesses, and it is fair to say that everyone is feeling the strain of this terrible recession. Being a digital agency we get streams of questions and enquiries about the various opportunities the internet has to offer, often the understanding of the various strategies can be minimal but in every instant the questioner wants to know – how will it benefit my business?

With this in mind we thought we would give a rundown of all the various digital solutions available to businesses and give you a no holds barred opinion of their benefits and disadvantages.

Search Engine Optimisation

Increasing your websites position in the search engine rankings through various techniques such as link building and article submission.

Advantages

Measurable
Will increase traffic to your website
Traffic coming onto website will be more targeted
There are long term results

Disadvantages

Does not have guaranteed results
There are a lot of unethical SEO companies out there
Can be unpredictable as the SEO ‘industry’ is always changing
Competitive nature of business industry can affect the success rate of the campaign

Social Media Optimisation

The process of generating publicity and traffic through social media websites such as Bebo, Facebook & LinkedIn.

Advantages

Brand awareness
You can connect to your target demographic
Listen to customer feedback or discussion on your product
Increases your company image
Generate a buzz about your brand
Increase linkability

Disadvantages

You cannot actually optimise social media, it has a life of its own and cannot be influenced easily
It will not necessarily work for every industry
It can be time consuming, profiles need to be maintained and updated regularly
Businesses open themselves up to scrutiny

Pay Per Click

Paying for sponsored links in the search engines.

Advantages

Instant results, sponsored links have prominent placement in the first page of results.
Beneficial to new websites

Disadvantages

Costly
Results are short term, once the PPC campaign ends so will the high rankings

Banner Advertisements

A form of advertisement featuring on another website

Advantages

Helps increase brand awareness
Good way to promote brand services or products
Links back to website
Reach target demographic

Disadvantages

People often find banner advertisements to be annoying
Depending on where you are placing them it can be quite pricey
Low click through rate

Affiliate Marketing

Placing advertisements on affiliate websites, when a sale or enquiry is made through the place advertisement payment is given to the affiliate website owner.

Advantages

More cost effective than banner advertisements
Good way to promote brand services or products

Disadvantages

Not all affiliate websites are willing to place banners
Unless you get an affiliate website with high traffic it

While Internet Marketing is an extremely useful tool to help drive business there are a multitude of channels which can be utilised and it can sometimes be a confusing choice. It is clear that not all channels are likely to work for all industries which is why here at 360innovate we take the time to learn about your business situation and use our wealth of experience to recommend a bespoke online marketing strategy which works for you

Tags: affiliate marketing, banner advertising, benefits pay per click, benefits seo, benefits social media optimisation, disadvantages of seo, disadvantages pay per click, ppc, seo

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Archive for the ‘The Social Media Diaries’ Category

Tip #6

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