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Leave a comment Posted on May 10, 2016May 29, 2016 Uncategorized

Why Word Of Mouth Marketing Is The Most Important Social Media

Word of Moth Marketing or WOMM for short, is exactly what it sounds like, an oral or written recommendation by a customer to another potential customer.
It is regarded as the most effective form of marketing.
For example, the Nielsen global advertising survey, said that in 2013, 84% of the people participating trust in recommendations they hear from people they know (today the number is closer to 92%).

According to Mark Zuckerberg; People influence people. Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.

How to get good word of mouth advertising?
Word of mouth marketing is most successful with brands that are working really hard to do right by their customers. This means a great offering partnered with exceptional customer service. The product needs to be strong, but it is just as important that the staff’s interacting with customers and clients is the best it could be.
Another way to create a good word of mouth is to be unique, have a one of a kind product or creative marketing ideas. Such as the Old Spice commercial on YouTube (below).

This commercial has over 52 Million views of YouTube and is so popular because it is funny and weird which people enjoy. This commercial became even more successful thanks to the power of word of mouth. One person saw it somewhere, and started to refer it to a friend or relative, and so on and so forth (Marrs, 2014).

The most time-consuming way to get good exposure of word of mouth is to become a industry thought leader, which means that a person is engaging in dialogue with existing industry leaders and power players while staying up to date on the latest industry news (Whitler, 2014).

One of the most important things to consider when creating good WOMM is to create a good name. Which means that people appreciate a business that is honest and treat their customers right. Using false advertising or trying to trick their customers will experience in bad WOMM and will ultimately lead to a decrease in sales (Bughin, et.al, 2010).

Lastly, a company needs to create an active social community and engage with their customers online.
The most efficient WOMM power brands, convince costumers that by buying their product, they are making a personal statement and joining special ranks.
The most devoted fans may even refer to favorite brands as “family” since certain products or services become part of a customer’s identity (Whitler, 2014).

Negative Aspects of WOMM?
With everything business do on a daily basis handling negative effects that some campaign or product have is probably one of the most common.
The disadvantages need to be taken into consideration before a company decides to rely on WOMM as their primary method of bringing in business.

WOMM can spread slowly, it takes time for employers and employees to spread the word about the product and it can take even longer to reach out to customers who can then keep spreading the word around. To help this a company can post things on their company blogs or social media platforms to reach out faster (Groeger, et.al, 2013).

Tracking issues is another factor that needs to be considered. It is almost impossible to thoroughly track the amount of business generated by WOMM. Asking customers to fill in a survey is one way to find out, but it does not usually cover as many people as needed for the company to make future marketing plans.

The most obvious negative effect of WOMM is negative feedback. If a customer have a bad experience with your business, it is very likely that they will tell other people of the bad experience and they will in turn tell more people and so on and so forth. It is a increasingly bad experience wave that will lead to a lot of potential customers not buying from a business. The only way to deal with this type of issue, is to prevent it before it happens. Every customer needs to be treated equally and never be treated badly by staff or other (Buttle, et.al, 2014).

Conclusion
In conclusion, WOMM is very effective but can be time-consuming, it is always a good marketing tool, even for online based businesses and it can help a business to get a lot of positive feedback and increase sales.
However, it can go the other way and create bad publicity, it is hard to keep track of and it can be a very slow process.
WOMM needs to be taken seriously by any business in today’s society. It either helps increase sales, but it can also rupture a business with one bad experience.

References
How Powerful Is Word-Of-Mouth, Exactly? – The Definitive Guide To Referral Marketing”.ReferralCandy. N.p., 2016. Web. 9 May 2016.

Bughin, J, J Doogan, and O.J Vetvik. “A New Way To Measure Word-Of-Mouth Marketing”. McKinsey & Company. N.p., 2010. Web. 9 May 2016.

Buttle, F and L Groeger. “Word-Of-Mouth Marketing: Towards An Improved Understanding Of Multi-Generational Campaign Reach”. European Journal of Marketing 48.7 (2014): p1186-1208. Print.

Groeger, Lars and Francis Buttle. “Word-Of-Mouth Marketing Influence On Offline And Online Communications: Evidence From Case Study Research”. Journal of Marketing Communications20.1-2 (2013): 21-41. Web.

Marrs, J. “5 Ways To Wield More Word Of Mouth Marketing Power”. Wordstream. N.p., 2014. Web. 8 May 2016.

“The Disadvantages Of Word Of Mouth Advertising”. Smallbusiness.chron.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 10 May 2016.

“What People Watch, Listen To And Buy | Nielsen”. Nielsen.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 9 May 2016.

Whitler, K.A. “Why Word Of Mouth Marketing Is The Most Important Social Media”. Forbes 2014: 1-2. Web. 8 May 2016.

Leave a comment Posted on May 3, 2016 Social Media

How to Manage your Customer Relationship on Social Media

In today’s hyper social world, customers are likely to voice a complaint or offer a compliment about your product, service or business on Twitter or Facebook. And woe to the organization that does not acknowledge or respond to that Facebook or Twitter post promptly

These days, it is difficult to separate social media management from CRM, hence the increasing number of social CRM services. But just having a social CRM offering is not enough. Just like any technology, you have to first pick a customer engagement and management solution that is right for your organization and create a strategy and guidelines around using it (Schiff, 2013).

An active social media presence is more and more about how customers form opinions on which brands they like and which they don’t. Social CRM is a buzzword for sure but it’s one worth some thought on how the strategy behind it can color a business’ public perception. In a world where your followers are your customers, and where what you post or tweet can be screenshotted in an instant, it’s absolutely critical to have a plan and Social CRM can definitely help (Marvin, 2016).

Communicating

More than 60% of users interact with brands on social channels.
Twitter-users post an average of 500 million tweets every day, which means that social media is generating a higher volume of data on customer-brand interactions, which can be leveraged for better insights and more targeted marketing and support.
Social channels are about instantaneous communication, and customers expect companies to respond within an hour (Bennett, 2014).
Simply put, your customers want to be acknowledged.
But social CRM is not just about having conversations on social media or writing blogs for your company website.
Social CRM is built around the process of communicating and engaging across online communities. The conversations can take place on individual social media platforms, or on blogs, forums, and third party review sites.
A strong social engagement strategy allows businesses to remain in constant contact with their customers by providing excellent social care, advancing brand interests, and responding to feedback in a seamless cycle (Bober, 2016).

Managing Customer Relationships

As noted above, customers expect a high level of service. Regardless the quality of the product or service provided, they will not stay loyal on a long-term basis unless they are treated properly before, during and after a sale.
So we will cover some ways to manage the customer relationships.

Communicate with costumers, regular interaction with customers will help build trust and loyalty. If the customers believe that the company is communicating with them openly, they will feel their relationship with the company is one of mutual trust.

Use every channel possible to talk to customers. This does not just include Social Media, it can also be emails and telephone.

Measure costumer satisfaction levels. Gathering regular feedback and monitoring customer satisfaction is essential to maintain high standards of customer care.
You need to be constantly in touch with customers’ needs and market developments to keep a step ahead of competitors (The Marketing Donut, 2016).

Concusion

CRM is all about using the latest technology to make interactions between customer and company pleasant for the customer and fruitful for the company by squeezing out every drop of information given. Lately, that is meant using lots of automation software and cloud-based solutions that make CRM interactions faster, more intuitive, and ubiquitous in terms of UX across whatever device the customer is using.
Companies want to interact with users where they live. In today’s hyper-connected, always plugged-in world, that means reaching out to customers on social media platforms in a way that doesn’t feel like an invasion of privacy.
Social media is still a rapidly evolving internet phenomenon. The way users interact with social media is very different now than it was in 2010. Both companies and customers need to start to think about business as more online based in this day and age (Harrigan, et.al, 2014).

References

Ballings, M & Van den Poel, D. (2015). CRM in social media: Predicting increases in Facebook usage frequency. European Journal of Operational Research. 244 (1), p248-260.

Bennett, S. (2014). How Social Media Is Transforming Customer Relationship Management. Available: http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/social-media-crm/498921. Last accessed 3rd May 2016.

Bober, K. (2016). A Facebook Page is Not Enough: An Intro to Social CRM Done Right. Available: http://www.clarabridge.com/a-facebook-page-is-not-enough-an-intro-to-social-crm-done-right/. Last accessed 3rd May 2016.

Harrigan, P, Soutar, G, Choudhury, M & Lowe, M. (2014). Modelling CRM in a social media age. Australasian Marketing Journal. 23 (1), p27-37.

Marvin, R. (2016). Social CRM: Where Social Media Meets Customer Engagement. Available: http://uk.pcmag.com/hootsuite-pro/71279/opinion/social-crm-where-social-media-meets-customer-engag. Last accessed 3rd May 2016.

Schiff, J.L. (2013). 17 Tips for Achieving Social CRM Success.Available: http://www.cio.com/article/2385481/customer-relationship-management/17-tips-for-achieving-social-crm-success.html. Last accessed 3rd May 2016.

The Marketing Donut. (2016). Managing your Costumer Relationships.Available: http://www.marketingdonut.co.uk/marketing/customer-care/understanding-your-customers/managing-your-customer-relationships. Last accessed 3rd May 2016.

2 Comments Posted on April 25, 2016 Uncategorized

Is Ad-blocking killing the free web?

AdBlock Plus is the most popular ad blocker on the web. This browser plugin has been downloaded and installed millions of times, and is available for a range of different browsers. Although AdBlock Plus is the most popular ad blocker, dozens of alternatives are available.
Why Ad-blocking is so controversial is because a vast majority of websites exist thanks to online advertising.
Millions of websites, from tiny blogs to huge corporate-owned magazines, depend on online advertising revenues in order to operate (Shewan, 2015).

A recent study from the Reuters Institute for The Study of Journalism, suggested that only 13% of the internet users in the US, find traditional banner advertising useful, and near half find it distracting to their experience. 29% already say they avoid certain sites because of it. Furthermore, there is strong reason to believe that those attitudes are leading to faster uptake of ad avoidance techniques, in particular among millennials. 57% of those aged 18 to 29 say they would consider using ad blocking software if the number of ads they were served continued to increase (Mascioli, 2015).

Quality online content comes with a cost. Authors, journalists, researchers, bloggers dedicate time and intellectual effort to provide you with news, insightful ideas and knowledge. The content which you can easily access online, costs the publisher money.

When you turn on ad blocking you minimize the content publisher’s revenue.
While ad blocking does have an indirect effect on publishers earning through cost per click based ads, many large publishers use ad-impressions (CPM) to earn from advertising.
Each time an ad is displayed it is counted as an ad-impression, irrespective of whether the user clicks on it. These ad-impressions turns in to money which is used by the content publisher to pay authors, journalists, researchers, staff and finally itself if presumably they have any profits left (Oberoi, 2015).

So why should you not be using ad blockers?
Well, first of all, it means that the authors and staff etc. does not get any money.
With less ad revenue, big and smaller content providers are financially damaged. The New York Times, Boston Globe and The Times use different paid digital content models in an effort to improve revenue and counteract losses, which ad blocking causes.
If websites and newspapers offer their content through subscriptions, the whole idea of ‘free access to information’ is gone.

The Internet is not going to be a fee-based service any time soon, but we’ll surely see publications getting more aggressive in their attempts to counteract their ad revenue losses. If online advertising no longer serves them, other money-making models will be discovered.

Ad blocking is urging publications and media giants to experiment with different revenue models as they realize online advertising is no longer a viable option. mainly due to the proliferation and enhancement of ad blocking technologies.
Using pay walls is not exactly a million-dollar idea, in fact many times it have had the opposite effect, with subscriptions being very poor and online visitors heading to alternative free newspapers for their daily news fix (Naughton, 2015).

Even though a lot of people see ad blocking as harmless, it does harm a lot of businesses.
For a commercially sustainable Internet, advertising is essential.
Publishers will adopt new models for revenue, which will most likely mean less and low-quality content will be available for free.
The rest will be on a pay-for basis.

Ad blocking is a wake-up call for advertising agencies and the media who use them, it’s telling them that consumers are becoming more discerning and demanding, but this could backfire as big news media and publications adopt more invasive advertising approaches including sponsored articles, back-links and so on.

In the end, it is not about feeling guilty for ad-blocking your favorite website, it is about realizing how your actions are to your disadvantage in the long-run.

References

Mascioli, G. (2015). Will Ad-Blocking Millennials Destroy Online Publishing Or Save It?. Available: http://www.forbes.com/sites/giannimascioli/2015/09/20/will-ad-blocking-millennials-destroy-online-publishing-or-save-it/#66ca29616a6b. Last accessed 25th April 2016.

Naughton, J. (2015). The rise of ad-blocking could herald the end of the free internet. Available: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/27/ad-blocking-herald-end-of-free-internet-ios9-apple. Last accessed 25th April 2016

Oberoi, A. (2015). 5 Reasons How Ad Blocking is Killing Information On The Internet. Available: http://www.adpushup.com/blog/ad-blocking-bad-news-consumers/. Last accessed 25th April 2016.

Shewan, D. (2015). The Rise of Ad Blockers: Should Advertisers Be Panicking?(!!). Available: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/10/02/ad-blockers. Last accessed 25th April 2016.

1 Comment Posted on April 18, 2016 Facebook, Social Media

Advertising on Facebook, good or bad?

Individuals act in such manner that would maximize their benefits gained from social interactions (James T. Tedeschi, 2009).
Facebook provides an easy to use platform that can be accessed from almost anywhere to fulfill social needs of people. However, it can also be used for companies to advertise their products and keeping in touch with their customers.
Facebook alone has over 955 million active users and over 50% of active users log on to Facebook every day and an average user has approximately 130 friends on Facebook (Melason, 2012).

Thanks to the vast base of users Facebook is having, it becomes a paradise for marketers. It enables marketers to customize their advertisements to fit certain group of individuals. This can be done according to their demographic features or by their interests, and all marketers have to do is to choose which factors they are going to target their advertisements towards.

There are two different ways of advertising of behavioral targeting; Network targeting and On-site Targeting. In network targeting, the data is collected from various different sites and user preferences, where as on-site targeting is based on a specific-site. Facebook used to have on-site targeting, but is nowadays following its users’ moves even outside Facebook. There are two sides to this; Facebook follows users through their cookies as well as their “likes” (Popkin, 2011).

Difference Between Facebook ads and Google ads

Before we look at the various strengths of Google AdWords and Facebook Ads, it’s crucial to understand the primary difference between the two platforms.
Facebook Ads is a prime example of what is known as “paid social,” or the practice of advertising on social networks. With the highest number of MAUs of any social network in the world.
Unlike paid search, paid social helps users to find businesses based on the things they’re interested in and the ways in which they behave online.

Google AdWords is the world’s largest and most popular PPC advertising platform. AdWords is so widely used, it has become synonymous with the term “paid search.”
Paid search focuses on the targeting of keywords and the use of text-based advertisements. Advertisers using AdWords bid on keywords in the hopes that their ads will be displayed alongside search results.

Strengths of Google and Facebook
Today, Facebook Ads is a pioneer in the sphere of paid social, and has become a central part of many business’ digital marketing strategies.
Marketers are often taken by surprise by the potential return on investment that Facebook advertising offers, and how far advertisers can stretch a limited budget on the platform.
This highly competitive pricing makes Facebook a very attractive proposition to small businesses and companies with limited resources. Combined with the remarkable potential returns offered by the platform, Facebook is one of the best online advertising solutions available today (Wordstream, 2016).

Google’s advertising offerings are split across two primary networks – the Search network, and the Display network.
The Search network is the entirety of Google as a search engine, and advertisers can bid on an almost unlimited supply of keywords and phrases to target prospective customers.
The Google Display Network, which offers advertisers more visual ads such as banners, spans approximately 98% of the World Wide Web, making it a great choice for advertisers who want to accomplish marketing goals such as raising brand awareness.
Google makes an excellent addition to a digital marketing strategy, when combined with Google’s increasingly accurate search results, it’s easy to see why AdWords is the most popular and widely used PPC platform in the world (Wordstream, 2016).

Risks of Using Facebook for Advertisement
Before anyone should use Facebook for advertising, there are some risks to consider.
For example, if you’re caught using false information about a product, you might expect some negative feedback. When dealing with social media, this can go viral and spiral out of control. Dishonesty can be a trending topic on a variety of social sites, not just Facebook.
Using an online service is a constant risk for hackers, they are everywhere and in large numbers.
People can get classified information, so be aware of displaying emails, keeping the same password, etc.
The more risks that companies are aware of in social media, the better equipped they will be at handling them. The risks mentioned above only cover a small number of the many potential issues that could be faced (Robinson, 2013).

Conclusion
Using Facebook as a platform for advertisement is a great idea for either new companies or massive producers thanks to the low costs. There is no competition or bidding for keywords when using Facebook like there is for Google. However, there are major risks of using Facebook for ads thanks to the sheer exposure that occurs.
Facebook is the largest social media platform out there with nearly 1 billion users, not to use the advertising opportunity would be foolish in many peoples mind (Kapp, et.al. 2013).

References
Kapp, J, Peters, C & Oliver, D. (2013). Research Recruitment Using Facebook Advertising: Big Potential, Big Challenges. Journal of Cancer Education. 28 (1), p134-137.

Lukka, V & James, P. (2014). Attitudes toward Facebook advertising.Journal of Management and Marketing Research. 14 (2), p1-26.

Melason, D. (2012). Facebook posts first earnings as a public company Retrieved 12.9.2012, [http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/26/facebook-posts-first-earnings-as-a-publiccompany-1-8-billion/]

Popkin, (2011). Facebook to stop following you after log off. Retrieved from [http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/27/7991573-facebook-to-stopfollowing-you-after-log-off

Robinson, C. (2016). The Risks Associated with Social Media Marketing.Available: http://blog.tailwindapp.com/risks-of-social-media-marketing/. Last accessed 18th April 2016.

Tedeschi T.J (2009). Conflict, Power & Games – The Experimental Study of Interpersonal Relations: Transaction Publishers]

Wordstream. (2016). Facebook Ads vs. Google AdWords: Which Should You Be Using?. Available: http://www.wordstream.com/facebook-vs-google. Last accessed 18th April 2016

1 Comment Posted on January 29, 2016February 7, 2016 Social Media

Benefits and risks to use Social Media in business

The short answer to what social media is, according to Lon Safko (2012) it is the media we use to be social.

A social network, trusted network, virtual community, e-community, or online community is a group of people who interact through newsletters, blogs, comments, e-mail, and instant messages. The social network’s goal is to build trust in a given community. Every social network has different levels of interaction and participation among members. This can range from adding comments or tags to a blog or message board posts, to competing against other people in Virtual Gaming.
The ability to intermingle with like-minded individuals instantly from anywhere on the globe, has considerable beneﬁts (Safko, 2012).

The benefits to use Social Media in business
Because it appeared quickly, social media has developed a reputation by some for being a passing marketing interest, and therefore, an unprofitable one.
The statistics, however, illustrate a different picture. According to Hubspot, 92% of marketers in 2014 claimed that social media marketing was important for their business, with 80% indicating their efforts increased traffic to their websites. And according to Social Media Examiner, 97% of marketers are currently participating in social media but 85% of participants aren’t sure what social media tools are the best to use (DeMers, 2011).

For businesses in any industry, the key to success is knowing your audience. Social media makes this possible, and easier to accomplish than ever. With tools like Facebook Insights in Hootsuite (a site which manages all your social media) you can learn the dominant languages spoken among your social media audience, as well as their age and gender. This knowledge can help you cater campaigns and product offers to your target audience, which will provide you a better return on investment (Cisnero, 2014).

(Taken from Hootsuite, 2015)

Social media for business gives you instant access to positive or negative feedback, which provides you with valuable insights on the customer perspective. For example, if you launch a new product and share it on social media, you’ll instantly learn what your customers think of it. Another way to gain customer perspective with social media is by learning how they use your product; brands often base new products or services on their customers’ original ideas.

Another benefit for any business to use social media is the fact that it increases the web traffic of your website. SEO is the best way to capture relevant traffic from search engines, but the requirements for success are always changing. It’s no longer enough to regularly update your blog, ensure optimized title tags and meta descriptions, and distribute links pointing back to your site. Google and other search engines may be calculating their rankings using social media presence as a significant factor, because of the fact that strong brands almost always use social media. As such, being active on social media could act as a “brand signal” to search engines that your brand is legitimate, credible, and trustworthy. That means, if you want to rank for a given set of keywords, having a strong social media presence could be almost mandatory.

Risks for businesses using Social Media

One inappropriate tweet or Facebook post can cause irreparable damage, but should this stop companies from integrating social media into their business?

Social media may cause a risk to a company’s reputation by creating negative publicity. Legal issues may perhaps arise if a company gives an inappropriate comment about another company on a social media platform for instance.
While social media allows a company to interact directly with customers in real time, it also gives those same customers a public platform to voice dissatisfaction.
However, Steve Nicholls, author of the best-selling book “Social Media in Business,” (techxb.com) believes that any form of progress comes with risk and the key is to identify them and overcome them.

Conclusion
As we all know, social media is ever changing, and what was cool yesterday might not be tomorrow (O´Hare, 2011).
The longer you wait, the more you have to lose. Social media marketing, when done right, can lead to more customers, more traffic, and more conversions.
The most important things online are to listen first, and when it’s appropriate to add something to the conversation, you slide it in, just like in the real world.

Sources

Chaney, P (2009). The Digital Handshake, Seven Proven Strategies to Grow your Business using Social Media. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. p185

Cisnero, K. (2014). Benefits of Social Media for Business Every Skeptic Should Know. Available: http://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-for-business/. Last accessed 28th Jan 2016.

DeMers, J. (2014). The Top 10 Benefits Of Social Media Marketing. Available: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2014/08/11/the-top-10-benefits-of-social-media-marketing/2/#20e587935232. Last accessed 28th Jan 2016

Hootsuite. (2014). Social media is an easy way to learn about your audience. Available: http://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-for-business/. Last accessed 28th Jan 2016

O´Hare, C. (2011). Utilizing Social Media to Benefit your Company. Available: http://web.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=9ba6ebbb-d440-4845-afa8-62b761d80dc1%40sessionmgr198&vid=1&hid=110. Last accessed 28th Jan 2016

Safko, L (2012). The Social Media Bible. 3rd ed. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons.. P537-600

Techxb. (2014). Top five risks companies face when using social media. Available: http://techxb.com/top-five-risks-companies-face-when-using-social-media. Last accessed 28th Jan 2016

1 Comment Posted on January 29, 2016February 7, 2016 SEO

How to use SEO techniques to Increase Website Visibility

It starts with optimizing your website with keywords and phrases. You may already have a good idea which words people use to find your business but it’s important to keep an open mind and do your research. The results may surprise you. The Google Keyword tool can help you find the most popular words and phrases.
In short, SEO helps you find what you need on the web (Killoran, 2013).

Using SEO to Increase Visibility?

SEO is a technical process, and as such, it impacts major technology choices. A CMS for example, can facilitate or, possibly, undermine your SEO strategy. Some platforms do not allow you to have titles and meta descriptions that vary from one web page to the next, create hundreds of pages of duplicate content, or make a 302, temporary, redirect the default redirect.

An important factor to understand is the nature of the market in which you are competing. This tells you how competitive the environment is in general, and augmented with additional research, which you can use to tell how competitive the SEO environment is.

Another method you can use to get a very quick read on competitiveness is using a keyword tool such as the Google Traffic Estimator to see what your cost per click would be.

A key factor is how many clicks from the home page it takes to reach a page. A page that is only one click from the home page is clearly important. A page that is five clicks away is not nearly as influential. In fact, the search engine spider may never even find such a page. In SEO it is important to keep the site architecture as flat as possible, to minimize clicks from the home page to important content. However, too many links on a page are not good for search engines either. The bottom line is that you need to plan out a site structure that is as flat as you can reasonably make it without compromising the user experience.
Establish a strong foundation, and you will help set yourself up for SEO success (Marketing Donut, 2015).

Keyword Research

Every search phrase that’s typed into an engine is recorded in one way or another, and keyword research tools allow you to retrieve this information. However, those tools cannot show you how valuable or important it might be to rank for and receive traffic from those searches. To understand the value of a keyword, you need to research further, make some hypotheses, test, and iterate, the classic web marketing formula.
Popular search terms usually comprise less than 30% of the overall searches performed on the Web. The remaining 70% lie in what’s commonly called the long tail of search (Enge, et.al. 2012).

It is a good idea to target keywords that indicate imminent action, because searchers are more likely to perform the corresponding action on your site when they search for those terms than they are when they come to your site from different search terms. Your click-through/conversion rates are likely to be higher if you target keywords that indicate the intent behind the search. You can also test this by setting up a PPC campaign and buying clicks on a given keyword and seeing how it converts for you.
Pay attention to your site’s content and compare it to what other sites in the top results are offering. You can also use an analytic program to check which of your pages have the highest abandonment rates. See what you can change on those pages to improve the user experience and increase users’ level of enjoyment when using your site.
Keyword research is a complex and time-consuming task, but the rewards are high. Once you learn where the keyword search volume is, you can begin to think about how that affects the information architecture and the navigation structure of your site (Imperial College London, 2016).

Conclusion
SEO and Keyword Research are vital parts to increase the visibility of your website, they are time consuming but have high rewards for when it is done. It is something that can help any business that need to increase traffic on their sites, from small businesses to large, SEO is very important and should be undertaken by all.

Sources

Enge, E, Spencer, S, Stricchiola, J and Fishkin, R (2012). The Art of SEO. 2nd ed. United States of America: O´Reilly Media inc. p25-160.

Killoran, J. (2013). How to Use Search Engine Optimization Techniques to Increase Website Visibility. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication. 56 (1), p1-4.

Imperial College London. (2016). Increasing the visibility of your website. Available: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/staff/tools-and-reference/web-guide/training-and-events/materials/seo/. Last accessed 29th January 2016.

The Marketing Donut. (2015). Online Marketing. Available: http://www.marketingdonut.co.uk/marketing/online-marketing/seo. Last accessed 29th January 2016.

Leave a comment Posted on October 15, 2015October 15, 2015 Uncategorized

IKEA: Using modern technology to be able to change

IKEA is the company you either love or hate. They have become one of the most well known companies in the world thanks to their cheap self-assembly furniture line.

In a case study developed by Brandwatch, they said that recently IKEA wanted to embark upon a program to connect their different business units together using social media as a valuable channel across regions in a collaborative and intelligent way.
The business would benefit from not only discovering insights in real-time, but also sharing them swiftly with the teams that would be able to act upon them.
Tasked with pioneering this positive change, the organization’s Digital Development team worked with The Socializers to outline a strategy to morph IKEA into a truly socially intelligent company.
The Socializers are an agency who are focused on people and technology and were chosen by IKEA’s Digital Development team to help them with social change in the organization.

Thanks to insights and learning’s taken from the social media command center and with the help of Brandwatch, IKEA found the value and importance of being more social.
Information is being shared and directed to the appropriate departments for action, and a culture of wisdom and experience sharing is emerging.

As this area of the business matures, other challenges around techniques for efficiently distributing information are surfacing, but with the Digital Development team, IKEA are well prepared for the future and will be ready for it.

I wish I had more information to put in here that would show how IKEA went about all of this, but it was interrupted by the tutor.

Leave a comment Posted on October 15, 2015October 15, 2015 Uncategorized

Hello World!

Hello and welcome to my blog which will give you an insight to the wonderful world of Digital Marketing!

John's Digital Marketing Blog