Social Media
Since the explosion of blogs and social networking sites in 2004-2005 we have been finding innovative ways to incorporate social media into marketing strategies.
The changes which happened about this time can be put down to “Web 2.0″, a phrase originally coined by Tim O’Reilly to suggest the second generation web. It doesnt really describe new technologies but more about the ways in which users interact with each other on the web and as a consequence the way in which web developers have designed the new wave of websites to encourage conversations, sharing and interaction.
Social Media Strategy
A Social Media Strategy can be made up of many different types of media, and will often contain the following elements;
Blogs
Every day approximately 120,000 new blogs are created – roughly 1.4 new blogs every second.
With blogs receiving 1.5 million posts per day, the equivalent of 17 posts per second, blogging is undisputedly the fastest and most popular method of creating discussions or commentary on a particular product/service.
Blogs can vary in form, ranging from a simple discussion to a more personalised form of online diary entries. We can work directly with your business to advise you in the design, build, and maintenance of a blog, as well as advising the most effective way to use a blog as a PR tool and for search engine optimisation.
Buzz Monitoring
Understanding what people are saying about your brand in the many forums, blogs and social sites on the internet provides valuable information for developing your marketing strategy. We monitor the blogosphere for key words and phrases to find out what the general sentiment is towards your brand – either as positive, neutral or negative.
By identifying who are the most influential individuals and sites, we propose ways in which we might influence them with a PR and communications strategy. We then continually monitor the internet for the learned keywords and phrases to understand how our planned actions and communications have changed attitudes.
Outreach Programmes
One of the main objectives of blogger outreach is to reach influencers who will spread the word about a particular brand. We can work with you to find the blogs and bloggers that hold the most influence in your particular field, create a campaign and manage the communication strategy to spread your message.
Social Network sites
Nearly half of the online adult population around the world is a member of at least one networking site, with Facebook and MySpace between them housing over 170 million monthly active users. Our campaigns can vary from – setting up and managing groups and pages on Facebook, MySpace or Bebo, to targeted social network advertising and viral applications development.
Microblogging
E.g. Twitter which is hugely popular at the moment. Twitter gives you the opportunity to communicate with your network in just 140 characters. Although Twitter has been primarily been used as a social network, some companies have already started using the site commercially including Dell, Starbucks and ASOS.
Video-sharing
Most people are now familar with YouTube and the influence it has on the next generation of media users. But video-sharing is not just for budding popstars or film producers, post your corporate and product videos on YouTube and other video channels. People will access them, comment on then and recommend them to their friends.
Photo-sharing
We recently set up a photo sharing application for Chester Zoo on the website Flickr.com. This allowed visitors upload their own photos to the zoos website which after moderation and watermarking were stored on the Flickr website. After just a year a search for the term Chester Zoo brings up over 32,000 items each photo attracting on average 10-50 comments. The zoo is starting to engage these visitors by offering special photo-shoot events.
Forums/Communities
People have been gathering in on line communities since the web began and forums and bulletin boards have always been popular. But since the growth of web 2.0 companies such as Dell and Avis have started to engage their users in customer service forums and the popularity of ask the expert sites such as moneysavingexpert.com have soared.
We can help you to build and manage customer forums as well as work with you on outreach programmes to manage your brands interests online.
Widgets
Widgets or Gadgets are small pieces of computer code which can be inserted into a website to manage data feeds or web services from other websites or data sources.
These days these widgets can be easily “grabbed” and inserted into your desktop, blog or social website which means that they can be distributed virally. The feed data they contain can vary from a photos (e.g. a Flickr widget) to products from an online catalogue, to films/videos, to travel information.
Podcasts/Videocasts
Podcasting is a term which originally came from broadcasting to iPods. It should really be called webcasting as it is not simply restricted to downloading sound and video broadcast material from the Apple iTunes store. We are able to advise on creating sound and video podcasts and distributing them through the various web channels available.
Whatever your product or brand we can advise on the best mix of viral marketing ideas and social media for your campaign.