More local advertisers are now moving towards the internet, taking away from local and more traditional advertising efforts. Within this new budgeting, the businesses are focusing on searches, consumer review sites, and social networking sites.
It's obvious now that more people are noticing the power of the internet and are reacting accordingly. The fact that local, traditional ways of advertising is slowly becoming outdated, like the hit print media is feeling now.
The Internet has made many everyday tasks easier, and has even allowed music to be shared widely, for little to no cost. How does this affect radio, or more specifically Internet radio? In recent years studies have shown that media consumers are moving away from traditional radio broadcasts because the lack of choice. Searching and downloading music have become the new popular trend of today, which has really created some big issues for listenership. Is this the death of Internet radio; the answer is still yet to be seen, but one threat is the competitor of satellite radio. This competitor has managed to get around some of the royalties that are encountered by Internet radio.
ComScore released stats May 13 showing the social network led all online publishers in the U.S. with 176 billion display ad impressions for the first quarter of 2010, good for a 16.2 percent market share. Yahoo came in second with 132 billion impressions, or 12.1 percent of the market. Microsoft is No. 3 with 60 billion impressions, or a 5.5 percent share. All of this means social advertising is on the rise, commensurate with the activity of the 400 million-plus users on leading social network Facebook.
This SEO Article touch on how useful SEO techniques can be expanding on what the common misperception of what SEO is used for. There are good thoughts and explanations of what SEO beyond just search engines. Sadly at the end you will find it was all just a sales pitch, but nonetheless its interesting.
This article has to do with brands that have decided to entirely use social media as their form of brand marketing. It's a short little article in which the author, someone who's career mainly focuses on the benefits of social media, criticizes marketers that have decided to go for budget-cutting social media marketing strategies entirely. Some businesses have decided that they can accomplish everything with social media, however, by cutting out the rest of the marketing mix, they cannot gain new customers and quickly go out of business.
We are all quite familiar with Twitter and its ways, for many, showing your Twitter popularity is a way to show employers social networking and web skills. Thus wouldn't it be great to be able to simply add followers, indeed it would.
If you had a bigger popularity on Twitter you were actually able to do so, a simple bug in the system allowed users to simply ad users as followers. Twitter soon enough discovered this bug and as a result for many Twitter users their accounts seemed to have no followers. Check out BBC's report on the happening.
Matt Silverman looks at popular ways social media have been used for the past week. Some of the ones that stood out for me were *How Non-Profits are Using Social Media for Real Results *How Does Twitter’s New Social Good Initiative Stack Up? *5 Great Ways to Find Music That Suits Your Mood *10 Essential Tips for Building Your Small Biz Team *5 Ways Small Businesses Can Leverage LinkedIn’s New Features
Each are things that we covered in class, except these articles give a bit more information for each.
Still can't find your favorite TV shows online? It might be awhile, even though online viewing has gone up by 16% and over 83% of younger viewers watch their TV shows online. So why the delay? It all comes down to money and marketing. Many broadcast companies haven't found enough revenue in online markets compared to television.
I figured since a number of us chose to compose and post videos for assignment four, this would be interesting and perhaps helpful for the next time we need to post videos! The five ways are described by the author as twitvid, twiddeo, twitc, twitLENS, and tweetube. These aren't mainstream ways... yet. Click here to find out why they soon will be!
Recently Google has been developing their online apps, these are essentially programs to aid the chore of everyday Internet activities. One example is Google Wave, which allows users to remotely collaborate on documents. Also Google has recently acquired DocVerse, which enables Internet users to collaborate with many of Microsoft’s programs, like Excel. Well now Microsoft wants to get into the cloud application market in order to keep up with the competition. It seems as if the company has created a perfect opportunity with the upcoming releases of Office 2010 and Sharepoint 2010. Windows Live users will be able to access simple versions of OneNote, Excel, Word and PowerPoint by means of their browser, but the catch is that some features are restricted to the full edition. So what is the difference?
“The difference in our platform is simplicity,” said Google Docs project manager -Jonathan Rochelle
These two companies have been competing for several years now and it seems like the war has only just begun.
This article focuses on a leverage point that many companies have not yet realized, and that is their employees. Their employees are the face of the company itself. The author states that for a staff of twenty people, that almost equates to 2 million connections. Thus, if given the opportunity, it very likely that the company establishes a "social brand," where there are real people talking to real customers. He uses Starbucks as a classic example, referring to them as one of the leaders on employees and branding. As employees start speaking well on behalf of Starbucks, on top of good customer relations, it also creates a socialized image of the company because their employees are social, and therefore the company and brand is associated with being social and real. He states in the next few years, business is going to see a new focus: hospitality.
I think the author makes a very valid point, as I personally love to go into a store and have a friendly conversation with the person behind the counter. At Starbucks, I have never experienced someone who was unfriendly, and it is a genuine friendly, not the " Hi, welcome to Taco Bell..." that is mumbled and sounds like part of a script. If companies become more aware of the employees and how they feel about their employer, they could either use it and advance themselves, or the company can ignore it and get left behind.
Guy Kawasaki explains 10 luxuries of having a LinkedIn profile and how it can help you in your job search. To start, they include getting the word out and getting recommendations from colleagues. He next explains that through advanced searches you can find out where people with your background are working, where people at a company came from, and where they go next.
He then explains that you can also check if a company is still hiring, contact the hiring manager, and get to the right HR person. A very helpful point was to find out secret job requirements. Lastly, he recommends that you can find start-ups to join and build your network before you need it.
Although major brands have embraced social media marketing, until now a basic question has gone unanswered: How do you quantify the economic value and other contributions to the business and brand of all these activities?
Brand and community managers finally have a simple, easy way to get answers with the new Social Marketing Dashboard from ComBlu, a Chicago-based consulting firm specializing in social marketing strategy, social media measurement and influencer engagement. This Web service integrates data points from branded social assets (Web sites, communities) and multiple social media outlets (Facebook, Twitter, blogs, forums, etc.) into a single dashboard.
Here are 6 things everyone should know about the new Facebook Connections, the program Facebook has put into place that makes aspects of your person profile "connections" that link to various people to form networks:
Ever wonder what the public's perception of Internet Market is? Well I have, I use to ponder the question for hours on end. Finally, after years of searching, I found equally like minded folk and together we conduct thorough market research. After many late nights of crunching the numbers and analyzing all our data, we finally had our results. This is a formal presentation and analysis of the findings. We hope you find this both useful and inspiring in your own research, and remember nothing is impossible.
We would also like to specially thank a few key individual for there help on this. Tom Cruise for believing in us and helping to fund the film, and a HUGE thanks goes out to Kayne West and boyz at Roc-A-Fella Recordz for laying down some dope tracks for us!
The most important aspect of social media is keeping a person's attention. Most people prefer humor, as evidenced by the onslaught of funny ads (or some just trying to be funny). To keep a person's interest piqued, a bit of mystery often gets people talking.
This youtube series from user 'iamamiwhoami' has posted 8 videos, each more bizarre than the next. The videos have each been seen by around 250,000 people, and has many users questioning who the videos come from.
Sometime tomorrow, Twitter will launch an embeddable tweets option. Usually, when a user wants to add tweets to a blog post, they have to quote it or take a screenshot to insert the image. Quotes aren't as visually impactful as screenshots, but screenshots take some time to add. So, tweets can now embed directly into a blog post.
Facebook accounts are being hacked in and sold on a criminal black market one called Carder.su. These accounts are sold for $25 if you have less and 10 friends and $45 if you have more than 10 in bundles of 1000. The accounts are sold and hacked for birthdays, full names, addresses, and mothers maiden names to create more identity thefts. Facebook accounts are more attractive due to the higher level of content and trust people have in putting their information online. However, not all the accounts sold in the bundles are real even though Facebook monitors for fake accounts some slip through the cracks. The accounts are also monitored for many friend requests instantly another suspicious behavior. However, there's no instant profit with selling Facebook accounts and the thieves need to work a lot harder to really do harm.
If you are not familiar with OfficeMax's 'Elf Yourself' viral marketing campaign, you are living under a rock sans Internet. This campaign allows users to upload their own pictures which are then pasted atop a dancing elf body. It is easy and amusing to use and only available during the December holiday season. User engagement is huge in the up and coming viral market and this campaign is the perfect example as it has brought so much attention to OfficeMax.
Manhattan based FourSquare which "lets users “check in” using mobile phones when they visit a specific place or business" is mulling a possible sale after reaching the 1 million user mark. FourSquare users earn rewards and are targeted for specific offers by businesses and marketers based on their location. Context aware services are poised to grow into over a 4 billion dollar advertising market by 2015.
On April 1, 2010 LinkedIn and Blackberry teamed up and now you can download an application for LinkedIn. This helps professionals stay even more intact with everything. The company said the BlackBerry platform is "a top priority for the LinkedIn mobile team" and to expect regular enhancements and additions to the application throughout 2010.This new application will help professionals during interviews, looking up personal profiles, and sending messages, in the palm of their hands. LinkedIn is a very popular tool in business today and it helps with personal branding, with the new app for Blackberry, it becomes even easier to update your profile and stay in touch.
Linkedin is taking after Twitter by introducing a "company follow" feature. This will allow for users to keep track of new job postings, offers, promotions, or any other company happenings. Linkedin is also implementing a linking status feature, which allows the user to link all of their status updates among their favorite social media sites.
The National Wildlife Foundation (NWF) has begun using social media by engaging the employees first. Most of the company is actively engaged in Twitter and Facebook. They are also using services like Foursquare to engage people when they are out in nature. They can be updated on what wildlife to look for and what they should check out while they are there.
They are also geocaching to connect everyone with nature no matter where they are. In addition they have added something called nature find, which can be found on their website. It works with Google Maps to help people find local parks, museums, planetariums, campground, and more.
Even if you have done it in the past, it's time to change your privacy settings again. Facebook recently announced it is teaming up with numerous sites to sell them your personal information. Every time you "Like" something now, Facebook hopes to sell this information to third party vendors.
To protect your information, click on "Privacy Settings" under the account tab. Change each section to say "Only Friends." The most important thing to do is under "Applications and Websites." Click on this and then navigate to the "Instant Personalization Pilot Program." Once there, deselect the box and Facebook will no longer be able to sell your info to third party vendors.
To find out what else you need to do, see the full article here.
This article is about a web promotions company called uSocial.net that creates a variety of services to help companies make online profit. The company has already generated a client list with all different size companies including the Korean Department of Tourism and several Fortune 500 companies.
Clients have the ability to buy everything from Facebook fans to genuine YouTube views starting at costs as low as $200.
Follow these 5 basic steps for a successful online presence.
1. First and foremost, your online presence reveals a lot about you, especially your negative attributes. Make sure employers, customers or partners don't come across these.
2. Social networks broke down traditional barriers of communication and enable easy connection between people, social or business networking is easily achieved and can open many doors and opportunities.
3. Your message will be heard. If you do your job right, communicating to higher ups or larger audiences can be done quite easily via the internet.
4. If you care about your social image, care about you online image. Make sure you claim your name or any name representative of what you are trying to represent online in order to avoid confusion, wrong association or slander.
5. It is becoming the standard of any industry. Not only for professionals but also for private users, having an online presence can be greatly beneficial, even if minimal. Avoiding such a low investment opportunity to stay up do date in standards can become problematic, especially in bigger industries.
For more check Thursday Bram's blog, a savvy blogger with an up coming book on tips and trick for building your career.
Since Facebook has become a place for users to share however much they want with other users, whether it is pictures, videos, statuses, etc., it is important that users take advantage of Facebook's privacy settings.
An important way to control what you show to different friends is to segment your friends into lists. With your friends divided into lists you can easily adjust privacy settings for that group of people, for example, work friends, college friends, friends you don't really know, etc. The article also discusses what information is appropriate and safe to share based on your relationship with the people in your segmented groups.
What is viral marketing? The answer is simple, viral marketing is the increase of brand awareness through the use of marketing on social networks. This can be achieved by using blogs and vlogs, as well as online advertisements. There are several key points to follow when attempting to create a buzz, and if you follow these guidelines you will be successful. Offer something to the consumer for free whether it be a product or service, they will eat it up. Keep the message short and sweet; nobody wants to sift through space fillers. Use a medium that is widely known, so that your message can spread easily. Stimulate sales through the use of common behaviors; if consumers feel an offer is limited they are more likely to act now. Lastly take advantage of outside resources, if you use many channels, (for example physical advertising) combined with your Internet campaign you will be likely to multiply your success.
This article explains the many benefits and potential pitfalls to having an online presence. The article explains how using social networking sites like Facebook, Linkdin, and Myspace can provide companies with a direct view of your life. They talk about the various steps you should follow to protect your self image when companies go to look at your profile by limiting the amount of inappropriate photos, comments, and videos that you are associated with. Also they explain how to make your profile private yet still providing basic information about you. This article not only discuses various pitfall but it also provides example of why it good to have an online presence. Placing relevant information like projects you have created, work experience, and your resume are just some of the beneficial thing you can do that might put you above the rest in the job market.
Facebook is now using the "like links" on there website as an open graph making it easy for them to get the analytics for each page. This new feature creates a problem for google because now they do not have direct contact with the information gained anymore. The change is a good one for facebook members and staff but not so good for google and the people they sold the information they got to. Full story
This article lists the top ten viral marketing campaigns of all time, according to blogstorm. Viral marketing campaigns have become incredibly popular due to their typically inexpensive launch rates and potential for huge success. They can create not only buzz and brand awareness but also great profits if executed well. While most of them are youtube videos, a couple aren't even online. These ten campaigns are some of the best examples and some of them weren't even intentional. Still, each campaign shows some small hints at how to be successful in viral marketing, mainly creativity.
