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Week 52
Social media marketing becoming more crucial – research study
The dramatic impact of social media services over traditional Internet marketing techniques shows it eclipsing more established techniques like search engine optimisation and search engine marketing.
The rapid ascent of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are well-known, but now it seems that they are not just accounting for more of the time that people spend online but displacing traditional websites and websurfing techniques. All signs that any social media strategy needs to put these projects at the heart of any broader marketing initiatives.
The report from Internet marketing firm DoNanza can be accessed through its blog here here: http://www.donanza.com/blog/
“This shift towards Social Marketing indicates that businesses believe that the potential value of social marketing is higher than any other online marketing channel”, said Liran Kotzer, CEO of DoNanza.
“I believe there are many reasons for this: first, the huge number of people spending their time on social environments such as Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, and the fact that social networks are here to stay and people are learning how to use them for business. In addition, many social media campaigns are more visible and easier to measure and understand than some of the methods used for in search engine marketing. However, Search engine marketing is definitely not decreasing, quite the contrary. In 2010, it is still the largest in terms of projects available on DoNanza.”
Some of the accompanying graphs show how Facebook dominates marketing projects aimed at social media channels. Other graphs demonstrate that the average budget for social media marketing projects are higher than for search engine marketing.
DoNanza found that there is still considerable evolution within the social media channels themselves, with Facebook and LinkedIn projects increasing, though others connected to MySpace in decline.
The report found that more established marketing techniques, such as email marketing are now marginal areas of the business.
Less than six months ago, Facebook’s prediction that email was in terminal decline seemed like an arrogant assertion, but now seems like an emerging fact of life, especially for non-corporate online communications.
Week 51
New Free eBook reveals power of search engine optimization
A great new ebook demonstrating the powers of social media marketing has just been published online by Kelvin Newman.
Titled the “‘Clockwork Pirate”, Newman shares his insights into improving social media traffic and SEO services, as he explains on his website: http://www.clockworkpirate.com/
“If you download my free book you’ll get the most comprehensive guide to building links for SEO and social media traffic ever written, but you’ll also get the opportunity to judge whether you have the wiles and follow through to call yourself a Clockwork Pirate,” he writes.
Newman also includes a novel way to promote his book, by obliging anyone who wishes to download it, to first either tweet or make a Facebook comment about the download – a novel marketing concept through Pay by Tweet that’s worth checking out, even if you never intend reading Newman’s book.
In fact, Optimize discovered the ebook in exactly this manner, because a friend who we follow on Twitter, issued his obligatory tweet when he downloaded the book: “I’ve just downloaded @kelvinnewman free book on link building \’clockwork pirate\’ http://bit.ly/b41Qvk”
Newman wanted to share what he’d learnt from spending his “working hours developing relationships, creating content and reaching out to people with the sole purpose of achieving better search engine results”. Better search engine optimization results simply means that through fine tuning websites and making the most of social media channels, more people who will be interested in your services will find your information more easily when they search using Google and similar services.
With so much media talking about the political power of social media in countries like Egypt and Tunisia and sceptical voices like Evgeny Morozov querying its effectiveness, there’s little doubt that as a marketing tool, social media marketing has truly come of age, even if it’s political reach.
Week 50
Apple heralds the Age of the App with 10 billion downloads
Apple’s App Store proved its incredible success after just two and half years in operation with the 10 billionth download on January 22.
The App Store, which distributes applications for Apple’s range of iPhones and iPads was greeted with some scepticism at its launch, but has demonstrated that consumers are willing to pay small amounts, if they pay at all, for programmes that can play games, access social media services and even convert an iPhone into a monitor for sleeping babies.
According to Apple, more than 350,000 separate applications are available in more than 90 countries. Apple gave the lucky British iPhone user who made the 10 billionth download – of a free game – a $10,000 gift card:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/01/22appstore.html
“The App Store has surpassed our wildest dreams,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The App Store has revolutionized how software is created, distributed, discovered and sold.”
Now similar App stores are available for Android-based smartphones and Apple’s Macintosh computer range.
Some critics warn that the spread of smartphone Apps is damaging the fundamental integrity of the Internet, though this has been dismissed by the many small developers who have found a new marketplace for their talents and the consumers who have zealously embraced the concept.
Some clever commercial Apps include those aimed at tourism, like one created by Booking.com for online hotel reservations. Simply by clicking open its iPhone widget, it can help a traveller search for hotels through a very simple interface. The App can also make the most of the iPhone’s inbuilt GPS system to search for hotel rooms close to the current location of the user – really making the most of a smartphones capabilities.
The upshot is that creating or utilising the right kind of App should now be a fundamental consideration for any Internet media strategy if you want to stay innovative and ahead of competitors in a marketplace that is constantly evolving.
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