media

There are 4 posts tagged media.

How to create the perfect Pecha Kucha?

So what is a Pecha Kucha?

“A Pecha Kucha is a presentation format that last exactly six minutes and forty seconds” according to (Rouse, 2016). A Pecha Kucha consists of 20 slides which last for exactly 20 seconds and can be sometimes referred to as a 20×20 presentation according to (Rouse, 2016).

Pecha Kucha stands for “the sounds of conversation” the slides will progress automatically with the presenter providing a voiceover the slides that are automatically turning according to (Rouse, 2016). Pecha Kucha’s should be fluid and run very smoothly without hesitation or people trying to go back to previous slide. They should be short and sharp and keep the audience engaged.

Tips for creating a good Pecha Kucha

Try and use images for words

By using images instead of words it helps the delivery of the presentation also makes it easier for the presenter to explain points. With only 20 seconds to deliver each slide it means that if you have lots of sentences once you have mentioned these your time could be up.

Make your presentation visually pleasing

It is really important that you make sure that your Pecha Kucha is visually pleasing and easy on the eye. It means that you will have to lose some of the more popular options like bullet points and long strings of text. Instead include some fancy text boxes and images like I said above to boost the impact of your presentation.

Please see below an example of a visually pleasing Pecha Kucha;

As you can see by the example above no words were used, only pictures. Pictures can speak a thousand words. This is why Pecha Kucha’s can be so effective if created properly and effectively!

The above video was taken from PechaKucha.org this is a great place to understand the power of Pecha Kucha.

Practice, Practice, Practice

It is essential that your Pecha Kucha flows properly and this can only happen if you know your presentation inside out. You have to know what is coming up on the next slide and practice many times before you have to present it. The best Pecha Kucha’s rarely have many words and only images so these need to be enough to prompt you as with no words there is nothing else to help you out. It needs to be like a script, practiced in this way too. You should know what to say without looking at the slides.

Timing

You only have 20 seconds per slide your timing has to be perfect as you cannot pause the slide progression or go back to slide if you haven’t quite finished this is why my point above is so important, to practice. I would recommend that you give yourself 16 seconds per slide to give you a bit of room for error or thinking encase you get stuck on a slide. If you do it could ruin your Pecha Kucha.

What software to use to create Pecha Kucha?

PowerPoint

The best way to create a Pecha Kucha is by using PowerPoint. The following steps to take to create a template can be seen below;

You can also download a template from this website by clicking here!

Prezi

This is another website that can be used to make a Pecha Kucha. According to (prezi.com, 2016) it uses “infinite canvas, unlike slides, Prezi uses an open canvas, allowing you to freely move in and out of ideas”. Prezi presentation are much more appealing on the eye than your usual PowerPoint. So if you want something different which will engage your audience Prezi is the one for you.

References

Rouse, M. (2016). What is PechaKucha (Pecha Kucha)? – Definition from WhatIs.com. [online] WhatIs.com. Available at: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/PechaKucha-pecha-kucha [Accessed 2 May 2016].

prezi.com. (2016). Why Prezi is Better | Visual Storytelling | Features | Prezi. [online] Available at: https://prezi.com/features/ [Accessed 2 May 2016].

Tips for creating the best content for your company

When creating and writing content it is important that you draft out your work and come back to it to amend and improve. Your first draft should be whatever comes into your mind. If you were to spend to much time thinking about what you are writing and to get it right first time it is likely to take you much longer and could cause writers block according to (Content Marketing Institute, 2011)

Next you have to make sure that you write the content in the right style to match your target audience. So it is important to know your customer base and match it to them. In doing so the content will be received better and they will be able to relate to the content you have written. (Johnson, 2013) mentions a good point that you should “Always write as if you were writing for that particular user and not for a crowd of faces”. This is very true content should be designed to appeal and persuade your target customer.

Creating SEO friendly content

It is important that your content is unique, it doesn’t have to be something completely new but it shouldn’t be a carbon copy of another person work. Google will actually identify content that is duplicated so it is important to make sure that your content isn’t copied from another site or blog.

The title and description are very important when writing content. This should be thought about in detail to ensure that it will be picked up in searches when people search for a certain area. According to (Chris, 2014) “you should give attention to title and description of your page but you should also consider adding keywords naturally in the body of the page as well.” Keywords are important, these in essence are tags and words that will be picked up in the search. For instance, if you are stag company, including references to stag and best man a certain activity this will help the content or blog be picked up within a google search.

(Chris, 2014) also identifies another great point that is important to consider when writing website content to boost SEO. It is really good to use interlinking. This is when companies use “internal linking in their articles/pages to create their own small webs within their websites” according to (Chris, 2014). When writing the content, they could be writing a blog post about a product that they sell, within the blog possibly when they write the name of the product they could create a hyperlink which will direct them to the landing page of the product.

Being on top of SEO

A piece of software that you can use to monitor your SEO called SEMrush. There is other SEO tracking software on the market but this is seen to be the market leader. According to (Semrush.com, 2016) this software enables you to see competitor’s best keywords, discover new competitors in AdWords, analyse competitors display ads, conduct link analysis, find the right keywords for SEO and PPC campaigns and also lets you create reports to see who the top publishers and advertiser are for your company.

An example of SEMrush’s dashboard can be seen below;

SR-Report_1

So by having the power to discover all of these facts mentioned above it should put you in a great position when writing specific content and also it should give you an idea of what you should be writing your content about.

References

Content Marketing Institute. (2011). Content Writing: 10 Ways to Write Like a Content Marketing Jedi. [online] Available at: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2011/06/content-marketing-jedi/ [Accessed 7 Apr. 2016].

Johnson, A. (2013). How To Write Great Content That Deserves To Rank: In 4 Simple Steps. [online] Moz. Available at: https://moz.com/ugc/how-to-write-great-content-that-deserves-to-rank-in-4-simple-steps [Accessed 7 Apr. 2016].

Chris, A. (2014). How to write SEO friendly content. [online] reliablesoft.net. Available at: https://www.reliablesoft.net/how-to-write-seo-friendly-content/ [Accessed 7 Apr. 2016].

Semrush.com. (2016). Features. [online] Available at: https://www.semrush.com/features/ [Accessed 12 Apr. 2016].

Affiliate marketing

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a marketing method which refers people to make online purchases. In return they earn commission by promoting other company’s products and services. This is a benefit for both parties as mentioned by (Strategies, 2016) the company promoting the product or service is happy as they are earning a commission just for advertising something on their website. The company who owns the product or service is of course happy because they have a sale from a customer who might not have normally come to their site direct.

The size of the affiliate marketing industry

So to give you an understanding of the size of the affiliate marketing industry in the UK, in 2013 advertising companies spent a total of £1bn marketing through their affiliate sites which in return generated a total of £14bn according to (Iabuk.net, 2016). Within a report by (Iabuk.net, 2016) it continues to mention that for every £1 spent it would bring a return of £14 for advertisers, and the most common method they use is OPM – (Online Performance Marketing) this according to (Iabuk.net, 2016) is “when advertisers don’t pay publishers to show the ad, they only pay if the ad causes someone to complete a defined action, such as making a purchase”.

OPM Examples

Compare the market – www.comparethemarket.com/

This is a website where consumers can go to find the best deals for a whole range of services including car insurance, home insurance, credit card, life insurance and broadband deals.

Comparethemarket

Wowcher – www.wowcher.co.uk/

Wowcher describe themselves as “a deal a day site that uses the power of group buying or bulk buying to get unbeatable deals on the best stuff to do, see, visit, eat and buy in a variety of cities in the UK” (Wowcher.co.uk, 2016).

Wowcher

Nectar – https://www.nectar.com/

Is a loyalty card programme which people can use in a number of UK high street retailers to generate points, in return for the points people can redeem them for days out, flight and meals.

 

Nectar

What are the advantages and disadvantages for companies using affiliate marketing?

Advantages
  • Companies will be available in many different areas of the internet which will result in more potential customers and certainly leads for the company, this will also mean that the company doesn’t have spend time and money in finding these customers.
  • The risk is very low for companies as they will only be paying the affiliate companies once they receive a lead or sale from the customer they found.
  • As a company starts to build its affiliate network it will in turn increase it rating for inbound links. In doing so it will mean that search engines will recognise this and boost their rankings when the company is searched for in a search engine.
Disadvantages
  • The company could lose track of how the product is being advertised and in term gain negative press for their products or services.
  • Companies can suffer from commission costs. If companies are using to many affiliates to gain customers, this could result in receiving bad leads and mean that they are paying out for customer’s details of poor quality.

Summary

All in all, affiliate marketing can be very profitable for both parties. It is important that the affiliate understands the product that they are advertising and believes in it in order to gain the most from it. The company needs to be wise with who they let advertise their product and where they are being advertised. It is important for the company that the affiliate understands and appreciates the rules and regulations when advertising products. If they do not, it could become costly for the company using the affiliate and in turn the company will lose money through it.

 

Strategies, S. (2016). Smart Affiliate Marketing Strategies. [online] The Smart Passive Income Blog. Available at: http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/affiliate-marketing-strategies/ [Accessed 28 Jan. 2016].

Iabuk.net, (2016). Affiliate marketing & lead generation ad spend hits £1bn | IAB UK. [online] Available at: http://www.iabuk.net/about/press/archive/affiliate-marketing-lead-generation-ad-spend-hits-1bn [Accessed 28 Jan. 2016].

Wowcher.co.uk, (2016). Wowcher | About Us. [online] Available at: http://www.wowcher.co.uk/aboutus.html [Accessed 31 Jan. 2016].

Vine as a digital marketing tool

So what is Vine?

Vine is a video sharing app which launched in January 2013. Vine was acquired by Twitter in October 2012 just before its launch. How this app works is that users can only record a total of 6 seconds worth of footage, then it will play to the continuously on a loop either in the app, twitter or on embedded webpages.

Vine is available on iOS, Android and Windows according to the companies website – https://vine.co

The impact of Vine

Since launch Vine boasts over 200 million active monthly users according to (Smith, 2016). Some other interesting statistic’s that (Smith, 2016) mentions is that the 10% of top brands that are on twitter that use Vine and 100 million people watch Vines each month!

Companies that use Vine

Many companies are now using Vine as a digital marketing platform, companies such as Cadbury’s, Nike, Sony and ASOS. Vine’s produced by companies like these are receiving “loops” in the 100,000’s which shows that it is reaching the masses.

Some great examples of Vine working for companies are below;

Sony

Nike

How to create a successful Vine?

The most important aspect of being successful in Vine is that you need to make sure that your Vines are creative and funny. These are essential for your company’s success on Vine. It is in truth a method of viral marketing. With viral marketing it takes a lot of luck to be successful, according to (Scott and Scott, 2011) “The formula is a combination of some great (and free) web content (a video, a blog entry, or an e-book) that I ground-breaking or amazing or hilarious or involves a celebrity, plus a network of people to light the fire”. I believe this is also the formula for Vine. Each video needs something that grabs the viewer’s attention, which (Scott and Scott, 2011) explains being “ground-breaking or hilarious” and also a celebrity endorser. If we look at an example of a company below that has created a video which is funny and includes celebrities and look at the loops at which the video received it shows how this method can work.

So for example if we look at this Vine shared by Jake Paul. He is advertising for Coca-Cola. This video currently has over 5 million loops. Jake Paul himself has 4.8 million followers. Coca-Cola would have seen Jake Paul as a “Vine Celebrity” and would have used the formula that I mentioned above, to create a video with something which is funny and then to help its success used a celebrity to push it.

Coca-Cola will also be gaining other benefits from getting Jake Paul to record and post a video on his account, he would have posted it to their account and used a hashtag to push it. Coca-Cola will have in return received advertising for Coca-Cola and also boosted its own followers by being mentioned by Jake Paul.

Would Vine work for everyone?

The simple answer is no. Vine will not work for everyone and it will cost companies a fair bit of money to have “Vine Celebrities” create a video for them. According to (DeSimone, 2016) another “Vine Celebrity” Brittany Furlan could charge around $43,500 for one six second Vine. She has 8.7 million followers and is in the top 5 list of “Celebrity Viner’s”.

The idea and concept for the video has to be right in order for the video to have any effect. The video would get lost amongst the masses, according to (Smith, 2016) on average there are 12 million videos uploaded everyday! Lastly when companies post their videos they must make sure that they hashtag them in order for them to be found, without this they are extremely unlikely reach any people.

Smith, C. (2016). By The Numbers: 25 Amazing Vine Statistics. [Blog] DMR. Available at: http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/vine-statistics/ [Accessed 28 Jan. 2016].

Scott, D. and Scott, D. (2011). The new rules of marketing & PR. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons.

DeSimone, E. (2016). How Do Viners Get Paid? 3 Simple Ways Vine Stars Make Money. [Blog] New Media Rockstars. Available at: http://newmediarockstars.com/2015/03/how-do-viners-get-paid-3-simple-ways-vine-stars-make-money/ [Accessed 28 Jan. 2016].