Content Marketing Success.

I read a very interesting post on content marketing the other day and it talked about how to position your content marketing strategy to really hit it where it counts with consumers. just to summarize it lets look at some of the things I learned from it.

Design means a lot: your content is far more interesting to read and a lot more receptive for the reader if it has visual appeal to it, remember the reader/audience might not be big on reading lengthy articles, while if these articles are complimented with visual aids, (infographs,pictures,GIFs) it hold the audience concentration in one place and allows you to get your point across more efficiently.

Use all aids: like i mentioned above about how to give a thought into putting some design in your content, adding visual aids pretty much goes hand-in-hand with this, use videos ,animations, call-outs to make your message more interesting to the audience.

Don’t force feed: the basic rule of marketing, which is to make profits and sales is always there somewhere in the head of a marketer,but when it comes to content marketing this changes a little.With content marketing you need to follow a more subtle and in-direct approach to selling your brand, content marketing should aim at educating,informing and entertaining the audience so that they themselves are enticed enough to inquire about the product or service and then allow themselves to experiment by actually using it. Going in with a “hard-selling” strategy will not allow you to approach audience/customers in a unique manner and you will end up as just another orthodox marketer trying to force feed your brand into the customers mouth.

Don’t keep them waiting: Most marketers do not realize when writing content that on the digital front, information needs to be fast and complete, and there has to be as much IMPORTANT information as you can put in when writing a content piece. What you need to do is to maintain the audience attention and make them go through as much information as they can WHEN they are in their “content reading mode”, provide links to support your article,give them hyper-linked content so that they can look into something right there and then. Don’t lead them on and don’t make them wait give them all important information all at once.

Sharing is caring..literally: Your content should be easy to share and go around, “liquid” content should not only be in terms of smoothly flowing and connecting but also in the form of easy sharing.

This is it for now 😀

Helpful ways of Catching Customers Through Social Media

Hey all, so its been a while since i wrote another blog post for Digitarium, other things had been keeping me busy lately, soo finally getting a little time today i decided to keep today’s post very simple and related to one of the things i talk most about here i.e. ways/tips on interacting and getting customers/audiences through the Social Media.

Here goes.

Search,Search and Search a bit more: the Social Media sphere is huge and believe it or not if you have a brand you might not be aware of people talking about it half the time, if not directly people might be using key words which are associated with your brand or word that might match your brand name, so you need to find these people,filter out these words on the Social Media, especially Twitter, use TweetDeck to put searches on specific words,tags. or associated brand words and find out whoever is talking about anything related to your brand,narrow them down and give them shout-outs a customer loves nothing better then the brand addressing them personally.

Pictures are always good: in today’s world people do not have time to read lengthy content, articles and paragraphs, but IF you post up a picture it can speak volumes..literally.. the probability of people engaging in conversation and feedback with you or your brand is twice as much when you put up a catchy picture or any sort of visual reference/ medium for the audience to interact with.

Use different platforms: Brands on the Social Media need to realize that their competitors might be using more than 1 medium of Digital communication, BUT they also need to realize that if they are using different Social Media Platforms for promotion they need to focus on attracting users on that specific platform, uniform offers all around different networks is not the best way to expand on Social Media, if an audience can find a brand promotion on Facebook and finds the same brand promotion on Twitter, then he would go on to the platform he is more accustomed to rather then going to all of em.try making exclusive offers on different Social Networks, to keep audience interested.

Lets Get Competing: Competitions are the best “evergreen” way of gathering volumes of followers and fans on your social media, it brings people on your page and it actually gets them to interact even. But, yes you need to be a little strategic when it comes to hosting these competitions, because this can attract a lot of unwanted or “fake” followers too. so yes hold competitions but looks for “quality” over “quantity” when devising competitions, so that you get loyal followers.

Lets Get Personal: People like it more when you are addressing them personally, they would be more inclined towards listening to you and do what you tell them to, if you address them individually they would prefer talking to you/your brand more rather than going towards others, and they will sooner or later turn into brand advocates for you. A consumer appreciates it more when a brand shouts out to them personally.

Ciao.

Boosting Your Business Through the Social Media

How was the world functioning,communication thriving and people interacting with each other before Facebook and the Social Media influx, i think things were pretty much progressing the way they should, companies and clients were communicating in the usual manner and businesses were attracting customers using the normal sales/brand promotion cycles.

What social media really did for us was to create a more efficient manner of communicating brand offerings and content sharing with people not only close to us but also people out of our physical reach, it really didn’t create a new “field” or “branch” in marketing 101 it actually complemented the already existing marketing techniques used for product and brand.

So by using social media and by understanding how  people use social media you can actually derive the most core marketing objectives out of it.

• Marketing aims to create awareness, it focuses at reaching as many people and relevant audiences as possible, how social media helps here; although you may be sending out the message to a handful of people, those handful further have their own friends, their friends have yet another set of friends,so on an so forth, social media helps in dissemination of the message to a broader scope an reach of focused audiences. All content sharing may not convert into promised purchases but if you are sharing content and your friends are further sharing it,it may end up being seen by more people at the days end, interesting,unique,appealing content has a virality and awareness level of its own.
• Sales, the biggest objective behind every marketer,when using the social media to do this create exclusive offers which might catch the eye of influence makers and in-turn allow them to generate it further among their friends, so instead of going to the masses,when it comes to using social media with the objective of generating sales try being as exclusive as possible.
• a very effective way of using social media is for creating loyalty of your brand among your followers,potential market, you need to use social media to promote your page and presence among your customers whenever you have access to it, create engaging content, visual and textual, create apps and mini competitions which would keep all audiences captivated and maintain interest in what the brand is offering.Get customers to engage with your content, it is very important, it helps in creating a deeper relationship with your customer an generate loyalty with them.

 

Marketing strategies relate very much to social media marketing strategies but you should not try to implement on the online front as they are, cater to offerings exclusively, one size DOES NOT fit all here. Brands in the New Age should be regular social media users, and should be helpful to customers in driving content based conversations by providing them the solutions which they are looking for.

The Future is Augmented Reality.

Marketing,promotions, communications and ultimately the technology used for these communications has come a long way since the inception of the internet and online brand management/marketing. It started with emails; sending out mass emails related to products and promotions in order to entice and capture customer minds and trickled down towards the phenomenon of SMS marketing, when companies started sending out mass cellphone texts to customer databases hence trying to get their attention through that. Then came the era of  “the Social Network”, marketing took a huge leap and brands set on the journey of social media and viral marketing, creating fans,tweeting,uploading viral videos. When all this became a norm marketers started towards the use of codes and QRs integrating QR images with products, using it in their BTLs and so on.

Enter Augmented Reality

According to its precise definition; Augmented Reality is a live,direct,or indirect view of a physical,real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer generated sensory input such as sound,video,graphics or GPS data. 

in simple words, Augmented Reality allowed marketers to bring the actual brand alive, available virtually right in the palm of your hand..literally. You can view the product from all dimensions, see the product in actual use,size and shape and experience just what it would feel like to own it.

Many companies have so far used AR for promotion, you could search what Appshaker did with National Geographic in London. They took AR and made people experience what it would be like being a part of National Geogrpahic :

similarly many people have started using AR quite creatively;

using it in furniture design and architecture:

Creating Business cards out of Augmented Reality;

Many other uses of Augmented Reality have surfaced, like using it for Medical lectures, Character creation,GPS systems, etc.

Are we ready for AR?

after seeing all this you would probably want to just get up an get your self a Phd in AR, but honestly its not just about the code, there’s design,content and video involved behind it but i am sure its nothing you creatives cant handle :).

We have yet to see a full blown use of AR integrated with brands, here locally, AR has hatched from its first phase in many western countries but its use is still limited, its any ones game right now to bring a solid AR based brand campaign. so saddle up.

 

Principals for Social Media Content Marketing.

Sweet and simple,here are some principals all you SoMe marketers and users can follow or include in your online Content management plans ;

• Be Focused– know who you are speaking to, your content should be able to communicate with your customers in easy user friendly language.
• Know what to achieve– you need to know what you want your content to do for you, do you want it to entertain the audience so that it leaves a memorable impact?, do you want it to provide leads for future sales?, or do you want it to go viral. You need to set a specific task/goal for it before sending it out.
• In-house publishing– open source social media has made it amazingly easy for users to generate and share content anywhere,anytime and everywhere,so now all you need to do is possess some hint of what is called “writing skills” and you can easily ,post blogs,send emails to your blog subscribers,tweet to your followers and promote it on Facebook.
• Problem solving– it is one of the biggest aspects of content generation and management, all customers,users and people have problems, if they point it out on your brand page be ready to help out these customers by offering them solutions or if there isn’t a solution just try to be nice to them.
• There is no use in generating online content if there is not Call to action for it, always include a call to action in all your content messages,it could be to subscribe,share,or register, creating call to actions help a brand in achieving its ultimate goal, which is to get customers and earn money.
• The Human Connection-  your content should speak to the customer…LIKE THE CUSTOMER, like a human would interact with another, be authentic and be real, that is what the “New Marketing” phenomenon is all about.
• Working examples- case studies have always been a strong marketing tools used by marketers over the years, when you translate it to social media or more specifically “Digital” you need to “SHOW” customers these case studies rather than “TELLING” them, use a visual source, place it on your pages, let customers see how others are using your products/ brands and how they are relating to it.
• Sense of Humor-  it would really really help you and your brand if you were able to take that baseball bat stuck up your tushy and loosened down a bit. Develop a sense of humor in your content and in the way you communicate with your audience its will help giving your brand a more “human” look as well.
• Publish everywhere-  share,share, and share your content some more,on the infinite array of apps and content sharing tools at your disposal on the digital front. blogs, websites,Facebook,Twitter etc.
• Use aids and visual tools-  not everyone is fond of reading, people like me for instance need information to be more visual, that makes me remember it more,reading obviously is always good but aiding it with visuals,photos,videos,audio (podcasts) can really make it shine.

Toodles…dont forget to share and subscribe 🙂

Handle your Negative Online Customer Comments Positively.

Some call it a blessing,some are irritated by it,others just downright don’t want it in their lives, this is how social media has impacted people ever since it grew in popularity and use.

However, brands and products have reaped more than a few benefits in terms of promotion and marketing on the online/digital frontier,taking their brand names to new heights. Along with this it has also given customers/target audiences a greater sense of attachment with the brand, through social media the customer now can simply say if he likes or doesn’t like a product right on the brands Facebook/Twitter/Google+ page . He can vent out his complaints,he can praise the brand, and he can provide opinions on what he like and what he doesn’t with regards to the brand.

With this comes the bad part,if interactions,complaints and opinions are left unattended on the social media, it starts planting a seed of doubt in the mind of the audience that the brand doesn’t pay much head to whatever the target market is saying. So how do  you deal with maintaining a positive relationship with your audiences online, and manage your interactions with them while mitigating their complains. Try this:

• Listen to what your audiences are saying to you and about you- if a customer is dissatisfied, try and talk to him,answer his query. Handle with care 🙂
• THINK before you SPEAK- never be in your “angry” mode when replying to customers/ or your online fans, because in that intense moment you could end up saying things which might not have good repercussions later on.Take your time in thinking just what to say to your online customer,how to craft an answer so that you/your brand remain in the “good books” while the customer is also left satisfied.
• Know the details- if you are running a brand, with a team of staff under you, you need to know what they are up to or how they are dealing with their side of customer interaction, once you know whats going on behind then you will be able to devise your answers in a better way.
• See how others are doing it – its always a good idea to look around other brand pages and learn to see how they are handling their customer interactions, this helps you in realizing the tone of interaction they are using, how customers are responding on their page to their updates and answers.
• Policies do work – social media interaction never follows a set pattern it could peak up negatives responses as well as positive ones, so having a set “rules of engagement” in terms of online responses helps if not completely erasing the negativity. If you do not define rules and policies for online engagement then you really don’t know where your online interaction is headed, and then it runs all over the place hence in the end deeming to be ineffective.

As social media progresses at such an exponential pace, online business managers or social media support teams are advised to be best prepared and skilled with handling such queries, complains, and concerns as soon as possible.

Always remember if a customer experience with your brand goes to the dung can, the online world with its tremendous capability to spread news and experiences in a viral shape can completely ruin your brand.

 

Look at me…Buy ME : Making your Brand Work in the Social Media era

Enough yapping about What social media is? how social media work? blah blah. We now come to most basic of marketing questions, what do marketers want?….. and NO its not “high brand recall” or “creating a  brand image” it all comes down to how much moolah your brand is raking in, in the real world profits dictate future promotions and “loyalty” of the marketer towards his brand,if the marketer does not believe in the brand himself, he cant make a profit out of it even if hell freezes over.

Since i mentioned before digital has now become a natural part of many organizations and marketing plans,it has also provided a platform for brands to break conventional marketing barriers and excrete sales out of potential customers who might not be within a brands reach conventionally.

so in the spirit of  “marketing”,how do you make branding work on the social media; you start with.

• researching how many people from your target market are on the social media. CREATE A SEPARATE FACEBOOK COMMUNITY.
• have a constant stream of PARTICIPATION within the community.
• keep your peeps engaged on the page, if you notice participation from someone in particular on the rise, ENGAGE WITH THEM DIRECTLY,others will notice.
• if you have a brand which is a hit among the target audience, and you have “loyal follwers to it” good for you. People want to talk about a your brand, give them reasons to talk about it, CREATE GREAT CONTENT around it.

your customers can be spreading word about your brand through various different channels:

• they follow it.
• they tweet about it
• they paste Facebook updates on it/about it
• they retweet about it.
• they put up links, videos, pictures about your brand.

USE IT TO YOUR ADVANTAGE.

• Most customers/users post only positive updates regarding a brand (females are much kinder in this aspect 🙂 )
• Generally its been seen that users who have “liked” a brand on facebook, have a larger number of followers and are greater influencers than people who are introverts on the Social Media.
• Another excellent way of “humanizing” your brand on social media is through creating a PERSONA for it.create a character around the brand,bring it to life by giving it a name for e.g. fido dido, direct all your posts through that persona for e.g. fido dido “likes” this, fido dido commented.Create engagement through it.
• Send promotions/Coupons on your brand community, make discounts and coupons available for online as well as physical users.
• consumers would like to get updates about your brand on and off, the most effective way is by short updates through Facebook, consumers prefer email notifications to a certain extent, but consumers absolutely are not fond of offline ads brands place about their promotions/ other things.

Bottom line, be THERE for your consumers, interact with them continuously through the social media,keep them interested…things should work out jusssttt fine for your brand then :D.