Posts About ‘social marketing’

After Sales Marketing Critique

After Sales Marketing

In November this year I decided to book a holiday for over Christmas, in particular a SKI Holiday. I of course looked on line initially to gauge prices and then went into Thomson & Tomas Cook branches (Off Line.)

Firstly what I realised is that these travel companies may be some of the biggest in the UK, however in their stores they general market Holidays in the Sun, when it came to ski-ing (This is based on the representatives I spoke to) they were not much use.

I decided to go back on-line  because I had specific requirements I wasn’t willing to book without talking to someone, I called a company called Crystal Ski. I realised very quickly that Crystal provide Ski & Snowboard holidays and so could give me all the advice I needed and couldn’t get in a general holiday shop or from a general Online holiday site.

I decided to make the purchase via phone and off course forgot about it.

(more…)

Sharing Makes us Feel Good, a Monkey Brain Shows Us

monkey-juice

In the past few years Social Media has often been referred to as being a ‘new’ phenomenon, something we need to adapt to. And in a way that is true, but it wasn’t the ‘social’ part of Social Media we needed to adapt to, but the ‘Media’ part: the fact that everything is shared must faster.

The “Social” principles of Social Media have been there forever. I’ve mentioned Jesus in my presentations before (started with 12 followers) as example of how Word of Mouth has been used throughout history and there are more examples to be found of the ‘social’ principles, sharing, caring and showing what we like and looking at others.

The reason we’ve been seeing the ‘social behaviour’ we are showing on Social Media throughout history is simple: it is in our genes. We are social animals. We want (need) to connect, we want to have what others have and we want to get things from other people.

A new research performed by Duke researchers now shows that ‘giving’, or even better ‘sharing, is most probably something that ‘tickles our brain’. They tested it on monkeys… (more…)

Social Targeting – Know WHO You Are Looking For!

target-dartbord

This past week I have had the displeasure of hearing a wide variety of social media talk that has me perplexed. Is it not so much that people targeting social media are doing it wrong, or even that they have the wrong intentions. The problem merely is that they don’t understand what social media is, how to interact with it, and how they benefit from it.

I recently walked past a meeting room where a start-up was deciding which route to go with social media. A very boisterious message was delivered fromt he guy who is presumably in charge – “What social media platform are our customers reaching out to us the most?” The answer came, and his closing was “great let’s target that.” (more…)

Having “Fans” Does Not Mean Engagement: Only 1% of Fans Engage

holland-fans

Social Media is a weird science, if you can call it a science at all. In essence it is very close to what we as human beings have always been doing: recommending things to others and communicating about what we see happening around us. Still marketers seem to have difficulties grabbing and understanding this and making the best use of this.

This probably comes from decades of ‘old school marketing’ we have been doing. Trying to reach as many people at once, hoping that some of them will respond to it. This type of old marketing leads to a ‘wrong’ approach of Social Media. We try to reach as many people as possible hoping they will interact with us.

Recent research shows that the way marketers and users look at Social Media differs quite a bit. Where marketers still believe ‘presence’ counts and people will engage if you just share things with them, users actually don’t care that much. It turns out that only one percent of Facebook users for example tend to ‘engage’ with brands. (more…)

The Target Audience Companies Keep Forgetting About

whisper

I do a lot of training sessions, I speak a lot and I help companies figure out what their strategy should be when it comes to online. Even though every client is different, there is always one question which I will ask every client, every attendee at training sessions and sometimes even the audience when I speak: what is your target audience?

Funny enough in nine out of ten times the answer is wrong. Or at least partially wrong. They are always missing one part of their target audience. Let me explain. (more…)

Friday Talk: Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an Ad man

As you may have noticed we have published a lot of talks (or presentations, however you prefer to call it) here on State of Search. We like to think you can learn from people giving away information :) . Most of the time the presentations were published on a Friday. Starting this week we are going to make that a regular returning item: Friday Talk. Every week you can find an inspiring talk here. To get you through the weekend if you have nothing to do, or to end the week, with a drink, sitting back and listening.

Today in our Friday Talk we bring you Rory Sutherland. As some of you may know he also presented at the last A4U Expo in Munich. In this talk he shows how important perception is. And that pushing a product as hard as you can is not entirely the right thing to do. Enjoy!

Book review: Social Media Marketing by Li Evans (@storyspinner)

Social Media Marketing by Li Evans - cover

There are many books out there about search and social media. Which one to read? Do they all tell the truth? Is there one book out there which hands me the holy grail in its copy? Probably not, there are many books which are full of nonsense, but a lot of books can tell you some pretty good stuff which can really help you forward.

In this review I wanted to find out if the book “Social Media Marketing” by Li Evans belonged to the first or second category. I was pleasantly surprised.

When I got Li’s book (which she generously allowed me to share with the State of Search blogging team) I was afraid that one thing would happen: I would open the book and it would tell me how I should open up a Twitter account and set up a Facebook Page and get tons of followers. When I did opened the book and started reading something else happened. (more…)

Social Marketing: From Offline to Universal (#a4uexpo presentation)

At

  • Social Marketing: From Offline to Universal (#a4uexpo presentation)
  • 6 killer presentations from #a4uexpo: Advanced Analytics, Information Architecture, Negative SEO & more
  • Launching an Affiliate Business on a ShoeString – A4U Expo London 2010
  • Microformat and Datafeed Optimisation – A4U Expo London 2010
  • Using Your Competitor’s Tactics to Gain a Competitive Edge – A4UExpo London 2010
    • I got to talk for no less than an hour on a topic which lies really close to me. Since a few months I am the “social marketing ambassador” (yes the jokes on the term ‘ambassador’ are many : -) ) and I am ‘hooked’ to search since many years now. In my view we will see a more integrated way of searching in the future. The different channels will be combined which means we will have to target our audiences differently. With “social” getting into our world rapidly we will need a different approach. And thats the approach I discussed last week in London.

    You can find the presentation below, but I thought I’d put my talks in writing and let you in on the world I think we are going to see in the near future. (more…)

    Are social signals ever going to usurp links

    There has been a lot of noise over the last couple of weeks regarding Google Patents such as those on dynamic linking, which have prompted conversations on whether SEO as we know it is due for a significant change. In particular the advent of social media is one that many experts in the sector have suggested is likely to see greater infliltration into the mainstream algorithm, particularly should Google start to look at other factors to replace the existing heavily link centric framework.

    There is no doubting that social media already has a significant place within SEO, and the search engines themselves. Take a look at many results – particularly in logged in accounts – and you will notice features such as ‘Social Circle’ included within your search results – and allowing peers and friends to potentially recommend and influence your decisions based on previous behaviour. This adds a new layer of complexity to many search campaigns, and a new consideration in terms of channel choice and integration. Further to this Real-time search, which includes data from social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed has also seen a lot of exposure over certain months, and looks a feature permanently included within the organic search results. (more…)