In the era of fast paced information technology, business success is not dependent only on innovating and developing new products or service; it depends a lot on innovative ways to market them. Online marketing is indeed different from traditional marketing. In traditional marketing the marketer had to search for prospective customers. On the contrary, in case of online marketing, customers search for the product or services based on their needs or wants. This changed methodology of marketing has changed the basic requirements as well. To master the new ways of marketing, it is important for the entrepreneurs and managers to understand these requirements which are discussed below:
• Niche- Unless you are selling hundreds of products, it is important to promote your products in a manner that it creates a niche market for itself. You can promote yourself as a garment retailer who sells embroidered tops or a furniture store that sells kids furniture. Remember that you need to focus on the benefits and not on the features of your product/ service.
• First Impression- What your customer sees in the first glance has to be a great impression. You also need to make sure that this first impression lasts long enough to help your customer take a purchase decision.
• Speed- If you wish to achieve the economies of scale twice as fast as you will through your existing pace, you need to market your product four times as fast as you are marketing it now. The faster you market your product, the broader is the coverage of your marketing, the easier it will be for your customer to reach you.
• Continuous innovation- It is a requirement for both, the product as well as the marketing strategy. As you increase the speed of marketing, do not forget to add innovations in your marketing strategy at every subsequent step; the sooner the better. It is not possible to have speedy innovation in product or service all the time. Before your customers get bored of seeing the same ad again and again, change what he sees. Additionally, any innovation or change in product or service should be highlighted clearly. The customer does not have time to read small fonts.
• Activeness- Online marketing requires you to be always available to know and answer what your customers want, when they want and where they want. You need to listen (or read) what they say and wherever they say. This requires you to be always on your toes. You just cannot afford to post an ad on YouTube today and read customers’ queries two days later. If you or your employee can be available to chat or respond to the mail as soon as possible, you increase the chance of your sales at least two times. It is also important to handle negative feedback professionally giving it the required attention and due.
• Economies of scope- Economies of scope is the term used when cost of producing (or marketing) two or more products together is less than producing (or marketing) them separately. Getting customer attention online can be easier through cross promoting products. It increases the coverage of your advertisements. All you need to look for are the suitable websites where you can post your ads or links to your website and vice versa.
• Flexibility- Online marketing sphere is ever-changing. You need to be flexible enough in your marketing strategy to cater to this ever-changing marketplace.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Integrating Twitter with Your Website
Twitter is a good method to provide a human face to your company by sharing thoughts, ideas and emotions. Joining Twitter is like joining a cocktail party- a good mix of fun with action. It is a way to show that you are current. Integrating your website with Twitter means that you and your company are transparent and legitimate. It is a maintenance free method to show an active image. The biggest and the obvious benefit is that it increases your target audience and also creates a good network of fans, followers and prospective clients.
Once you have decided to integrate Twitter with your website, you need to know the possible options for integration.
The most commonly used method is to put any of the forty Twitter buttons on your blog or website which might say “Follow me on Twitter” or “What am I doing?”
Another easy method is to add Twitter widget to the sidebar of your website or official blog. Your latest tweets will get displayed on the side bar.
Twitter tools is capable of creating a blog post from each of your tweets. It can also create a daily digest of tweet-posts and helps you post a tweet from your side bar. Whenever you post a blog, it creates a tweet which contains the link to your blog.
If you wish to keep a track of most popular Twitter links as frequently as every 5 minutes, Tweetmeme is the right tool for you.
If you wish to convert all those who like your website or blog-post into your fans and followers, TwitThis is the right promotional application for you. It is small button that appears on your website. Your fans and followers can click it to share with others what they are reading. Similar is the Wordpress plugin ‘Tweet This’. It easily allows you to configure the look and feel service and URL shortening service.
TweetSuite is the API which finds Tweets related to the current page of a blog post. It has features like posting of comments and retweets.
Chirrup does the same function as TweetSuite. The only difference is that Chirrup uses Javascript snippet for displaying the references from Twitter.
Twitterfeed is the tool which is used to insert tweets from any RSS feed into your Twitter stream. It also allows customization of the format of tweets.
IntenseDebate is an easy to install tool meant for threaded discussions and being able to notify Twitter when you have posted a comment. Aweber is known for its email marketing feature. It is popularly known as newsletter marketer.
The latest feature that has been added is Twitter @anywhere. It is actually a set of frameworks which facilitates in beginning an open discussion from any website. For starting the discussion, the website owner needs to drop a few lines of javascripts and the visitors can start the discussion. It has the ability to bring all Twitter functionalities on your website platform.
Once you have decided to integrate Twitter with your website, you need to know the possible options for integration.
The most commonly used method is to put any of the forty Twitter buttons on your blog or website which might say “Follow me on Twitter” or “What am I doing?”
Another easy method is to add Twitter widget to the sidebar of your website or official blog. Your latest tweets will get displayed on the side bar.
Twitter tools is capable of creating a blog post from each of your tweets. It can also create a daily digest of tweet-posts and helps you post a tweet from your side bar. Whenever you post a blog, it creates a tweet which contains the link to your blog.
If you wish to keep a track of most popular Twitter links as frequently as every 5 minutes, Tweetmeme is the right tool for you.
If you wish to convert all those who like your website or blog-post into your fans and followers, TwitThis is the right promotional application for you. It is small button that appears on your website. Your fans and followers can click it to share with others what they are reading. Similar is the Wordpress plugin ‘Tweet This’. It easily allows you to configure the look and feel service and URL shortening service.
TweetSuite is the API which finds Tweets related to the current page of a blog post. It has features like posting of comments and retweets.
Chirrup does the same function as TweetSuite. The only difference is that Chirrup uses Javascript snippet for displaying the references from Twitter.
Twitterfeed is the tool which is used to insert tweets from any RSS feed into your Twitter stream. It also allows customization of the format of tweets.
IntenseDebate is an easy to install tool meant for threaded discussions and being able to notify Twitter when you have posted a comment. Aweber is known for its email marketing feature. It is popularly known as newsletter marketer.
The latest feature that has been added is Twitter @anywhere. It is actually a set of frameworks which facilitates in beginning an open discussion from any website. For starting the discussion, the website owner needs to drop a few lines of javascripts and the visitors can start the discussion. It has the ability to bring all Twitter functionalities on your website platform.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Attributes of Social Media Tools for Integrating Them to Your Website
Are you still struggling to understand attributes social media tools that can help you increase the customer interaction while integrating your website and the social media tools? Better late than never. Let’s go through various attributes of social media tools and know which all tools have them.
1. Sharing Feature- Through sharing feature you can share the content of your companies websites to your social network. You are free to use the Share this or Add this feature as many social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube offer this. This feature helps in driving traffic to your website.
2. Embeds and Widgets- This lets you embed the feature of the tool on your website. This brings to real social interaction to static corporate websites. It is useful for real time customer interaction. However, you have limited control over what is being said. Also, the look and feel of the embed should match the look of your website else it will appear like a patch. YouTube Widget, Facebook Fan Box, Twitter Widgets and LinkedIn Third Party are the examples.
3. Authentication without registration- With this attribute, one can login to your website using login ids of social networking tools. With Twitter Connect, you can do this with two clicks. Users usually dislike filling registration forms again and again. Hence this attribute ensures increased traffic. However, it is difficult to collect the email ids of the visitors and hence data collection is not easy. Also social media tool gain more control through this. Facebook Connect, LinkedIn OAuth and Twitter’s OAuth are the examples.
4. Cross publishing from websites to social media tools- Using this feature, a user can inform some or all friends on social network about what they published on the blog or the website. The user can choose the friends with whom the content information can be shared. This leads to rapid sharing of content and can even lead to related features like activities and actions. However, this leads to disparity in the collected data and hence difficult for brands to control. Also the users should not be spamming all their friends about all the published content. This feature is supported by Facebook, LinkedIn (via REST APIs) and Twitter (with third party tools).
5. Real Time Updates- The corporate website gets updated in real time with the content on social media tools. This can also be done vice versa. However, all the content may not be relevant to be displayed on the website. Also excess of updates will make the webpage look crowded. Hence this feature should be used for key events and important customer interaction and not all of them. This is available with Twitter and LinkedIn (with REST API’s)
6. Social Personalization- This attributes means providing selective content to a user based on his profile information and behaviour in the past. Thus based on his profile on social network, the user gets a customized experience instead of generic experience. However, this leads to a series of customized content types which is costly and difficult to maintain. Also what is mentioned in a customer’s Twitter or Facebook profile might not be relevant for your business. Twitter provides access to all the profiles and selective behavioural data. Facebook and LinkedIn also offer this feature.
7. Social Context- Through this attribute, you get real time information about a customer based on the behaviour of his friends. This leads to increased relevancy of content and product suggested to a user’s friends and increased rate of action. This is a complex system which might be misleading at times as users might say something they do not like. You need to believe that your company is a media company to make this successful. This is again supported by all the three- Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (through articles they tweeted about).
8. Application Platform- Last but not the least is if the particular media tool support creation of third party applications using their network API’s and data. Companies can use this attribute to create applications with unique features which may lead to increased customer interaction. However, one needs to have expert web developers who understand your business. Getting such application created is also a costly affair. You need to hire resources in your team who have the required skill-sets and ascertain long term budget for it. LinkedIn’s OpenSocial is a typical example of this attribute. Facebook and Twitter also have this.
You must have noticed that we are talking about both merits and demerits of each of the features. One must understand that requirement of each industry is different. There should be analysis of strengths and weaknesses while designing a strategy.
1. Sharing Feature- Through sharing feature you can share the content of your companies websites to your social network. You are free to use the Share this or Add this feature as many social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube offer this. This feature helps in driving traffic to your website.
2. Embeds and Widgets- This lets you embed the feature of the tool on your website. This brings to real social interaction to static corporate websites. It is useful for real time customer interaction. However, you have limited control over what is being said. Also, the look and feel of the embed should match the look of your website else it will appear like a patch. YouTube Widget, Facebook Fan Box, Twitter Widgets and LinkedIn Third Party are the examples.
3. Authentication without registration- With this attribute, one can login to your website using login ids of social networking tools. With Twitter Connect, you can do this with two clicks. Users usually dislike filling registration forms again and again. Hence this attribute ensures increased traffic. However, it is difficult to collect the email ids of the visitors and hence data collection is not easy. Also social media tool gain more control through this. Facebook Connect, LinkedIn OAuth and Twitter’s OAuth are the examples.
4. Cross publishing from websites to social media tools- Using this feature, a user can inform some or all friends on social network about what they published on the blog or the website. The user can choose the friends with whom the content information can be shared. This leads to rapid sharing of content and can even lead to related features like activities and actions. However, this leads to disparity in the collected data and hence difficult for brands to control. Also the users should not be spamming all their friends about all the published content. This feature is supported by Facebook, LinkedIn (via REST APIs) and Twitter (with third party tools).
5. Real Time Updates- The corporate website gets updated in real time with the content on social media tools. This can also be done vice versa. However, all the content may not be relevant to be displayed on the website. Also excess of updates will make the webpage look crowded. Hence this feature should be used for key events and important customer interaction and not all of them. This is available with Twitter and LinkedIn (with REST API’s)
6. Social Personalization- This attributes means providing selective content to a user based on his profile information and behaviour in the past. Thus based on his profile on social network, the user gets a customized experience instead of generic experience. However, this leads to a series of customized content types which is costly and difficult to maintain. Also what is mentioned in a customer’s Twitter or Facebook profile might not be relevant for your business. Twitter provides access to all the profiles and selective behavioural data. Facebook and LinkedIn also offer this feature.
7. Social Context- Through this attribute, you get real time information about a customer based on the behaviour of his friends. This leads to increased relevancy of content and product suggested to a user’s friends and increased rate of action. This is a complex system which might be misleading at times as users might say something they do not like. You need to believe that your company is a media company to make this successful. This is again supported by all the three- Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (through articles they tweeted about).
8. Application Platform- Last but not the least is if the particular media tool support creation of third party applications using their network API’s and data. Companies can use this attribute to create applications with unique features which may lead to increased customer interaction. However, one needs to have expert web developers who understand your business. Getting such application created is also a costly affair. You need to hire resources in your team who have the required skill-sets and ascertain long term budget for it. LinkedIn’s OpenSocial is a typical example of this attribute. Facebook and Twitter also have this.
You must have noticed that we are talking about both merits and demerits of each of the features. One must understand that requirement of each industry is different. There should be analysis of strengths and weaknesses while designing a strategy.
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