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Beat the Reach – Facebook Organic Reach figures plummet

facebook-paid-ads

So, the inevitable news is out. Facebook’s organic reach figures have plummeted in the past few months. For those of you unaware of what ‘organic reach’ is, it is basically the number of people your pages can reach from people who have seen, liked or shared your post, without the need for paid advertising. It is a brilliant concept for small businesses that are starting out and don’t have the right kind of finance to invest in large advertising spaces on Facebook. However, it is just these businesses who are suffering the most. So how can you make the most of free advertisement without facing the consequences?

SEO (to put it simply). Make the most of the Internet, not just Facebook. Have a little look at one of our recent posts on how Google+ is great for SEO. It is all about using the search terms that are both popular and significant, and connecting all of your online media so that no matter where a customer ends up, they can be led straight back to the ‘hub’ of your business.

Don’t let your company suffer. Of course, it is perfectly understandable that if you want great online coverage, you will pay through the nose to get it, but when social media is free, and will hopefully remain free, why can’t you make the most of this asset? Don’t continuously stick to the basics; competition postings, sharing a picture related to your business and so on, go for the gold! Create a viral campaign; engage with your customers in a unique way, the weirder, the more wonderful. Compare the meerkat didn’t come from one stupid thought, it was all related to finding a cheap domain name, although it still worked as a crazy idea too. The cheap domain name and unique advert drove people to the ‘compare the meerkat’ site, which then led them to compare the market. Although buying the domain would have cost money, the unusually named site meant it was a cheaper investment than basic social media advertising.

In conclusion, don’t let your company get trampled by the heavily financed corporations. Think outside the box and let your online creativity flow, and let that flow from one hyperlink to your website! Convergence is key.

By Content Manager - Astrid Hall - @AstridGiraffeSM

How and Why Google+ is great for SEO

google-plus-seo

Firstly, let's just quickly establish what SEO actually is. It stands for Search Engine Optimisation. In a nutshell, it is making the most of search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Firefox and so on, to allow for high levels of traffic on your site. Whether it be a blog, social media profile or company website, it's all relevant.

Google’s own social networking page, ‘Google +’ has become the second largest social networking site since its launch in 2011, only beaten by the mighty Facebook. However they insist it is more than just social networking, but a platform to bring people together within the context of the many services Google has to offer. But the big question is, how does it help boost SEO for yourself or your business?

The geniuses that built Google+ made sure their search results would overpower any other social networking platforms. Therefore if a search is made – such as your name – your Google+ profile will be above any other active site in your name, such as Facebook and Twitter, so it doesn’t depend on which one you use most or what has the most information.

However, this does not mean your other profiles will necessarily have fewer views or be less active. The advantage of Google+ is that you can include embedded links to all your other profiles on the web. Therefore with the use of Google+, search results are optimised and therefore the traffic on your sites is likely to increase.

Similarly, by adding your Google+ page as a link on your other sites, it will make it easier for the search engine to associate your website to your Google+ profile.

Another reason Google+ acts as the king of search results is because they wisely choose descriptive title tags. This is a key tool when compared to Facebook and Twitter, who simply use opening lines of an update for their search results. But Google makes sure they have the specific topic words that people will be looking for, for example, the description of your business.

Google’s sneaky tactics for optimising search results by linking to peoples Google+ profiles benefits in other ways. As we have established, in search results, Google will prioritise links to Google+ profiles, so if you have one, but your competitor doesn’t, then expect yourself to rank on top even if you are a smaller business.

Clearly, as the worlds most popular search engine, Google will rank Google+ profiles higher than any other social network. But as explained, this also holds advantages for your other pages, all through links. Most importantly, make sure your Google+ profile has lots of informative content, looks appealing and uses plenty of key words to optimise results.

By Content Assistant - Alice Hughes - @aliceeehughes

Giraffe are now an Official Supporter of the Giraffe Conservation Foundation.

e945ac40aa16606b5ae826b0c80979b9In February, you may remember that our Valentine's Day campaign was a little different to most.  We made a conscious decision in the office that given the ridiculous amounts of money spent on Valentine's gifts each year, we'd try and encourage our audience to donate a small percentage of that amount to charity.  We directed you all to donate that money to a charity that is close to our hearts, the Giraffe Conservation Foundation.  The campaign was a big success, with lots of people hearing our message and agreeing.  We were over the moon with the feedback.

Days after our blog post, we were contacted by one of the incredible staff from GCF (Giraffe Conservation Foundation), Stephanie Fennessy.  Stephanie thanked us for thinking of them and helping them reach more people with their message.  After a few emails, she offered us the opportunity to become an official supporter of the charity - an opportunity we grabbed with both hands.  So we are extremely proud to announce that Giraffe Social Media is now an official supporter of the Giraffe Conservation Foundation.

Our support will begin in the form of helping GCF increase their reach, by spreading their message to our audience, as well as assisting them with expert social media advice.  We will also be looking to create some campaigns/events that will help raise funding for them in the near future.  We'd like to begin sharing their message today, with some information about the work that they do to protect beautiful Giraffes all over Africa.

UntitledThe Giraffe Conservation Foundation (GCF)

"The Giraffe Conservation Foundation (GCF) supports giraffe projects throughout their natural range which have strong conservation and management links. Due to a lack of understanding of much of giraffe's natural history, key research which provides baseline for conservation and management is missing to answer the bigger questions.

Throughout their range, giraffe face numerous threats which are ever increasing; however giraffe have not appeared high up on the conservation agenda of many countries or NGOs, and it is now timely to promote their conservation at a time when real impacts on their numbers and range are happening.

Therefore, with a need to understand so much more about giraffe, the GCF seeks to provide targeted support to projects that will provide a better understand of the science and issues, and as such provide essential conservation and management solutions for the species' long-term sustainability.

The Giraffe Conservation Foundation mission is to:

  • Promote the importance and profile of giraffe conservation on the international stage.
  • Secure viable, and protect existing, habitat for giraffe and other wildlife.
  • Support dedicated and innovative research to better understand giraffe ecology, conservation and management.
  • Establish the current status of all giraffe populations and (sub)species to support and inform their conservation and management.
  • Identify key threats to giraffe and innovative ways to mitigate these.
  • Develop a world class network of individuals and organisations dedicated to securing the future of giraffe.
  • Provide a platform and forum for giraffe related research, conservation and management discussion.
  • Increase awareness about the plight of giraffe.
  • Promote and support giraffe conservation initiatives and work collaboratively with local communities to develop a sustainable future for both people and wildlife.
  • Establish GCF as the key focal organisation for giraffe conservation and management.
  • Maintain a close working relationship with the IGWG to provide comprehensive educational and technical support.
  • To be the leading international organisation for giraffe conservation and management.

How can you help?

Helping couldn't be easier:

Website: http://www.giraffeconservation.org/

Donate here: http://www.justgiving.com/giraffeconservation/donate

Follow them on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Save_Giraffe

Like them on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Giraffe-Conservation-Foundation/213643668667273

Twitter’s new Lead Generation Card takes flight

Just when we thought technology and advertising couldn’t become more connected, it did. Twitter has announced a new ‘Lead Generation Card’ that could be just the right lead to simple and quick consumer engagement.

The Lead Generation Card is really quite a basic idea, but simplicity seems to be the key to success. First of all we must clarify what a ‘Twitter Card’ is. Twitter cards allow you to attach media experience to Tweets that link to your content. Twitter cards enable you control of how your content is displayed with Tweets, drives traffic to your site and can increase the number of people following your Twitter accounts through content attribution.

LeadGenCard_520_1Now that we know a little more, we can expand on what the Lead Generation Card actually is. To put it simply, it allows Twitter users to instantly sign up to company mailing lists. When someone expands your tweet promotion, they will be able to see full details and their @username and email address is already pre-filled within the Card. The user then clicks a button, which sends the information directly to you. It eliminates the use of time consuming forms, and the quick and easy process should effectively get more customers to sign up to your company.

It all sounds rather perfect, doesn’t it? As Twitter is already a globally used social media site, the traffic is already there, it is more a case of how you hashtag your Tweets to encourage people to view it and potentially sign up. However, with just the click of a button being so simple and seemingly harmless, does this mean users will pay full attention to what they are getting themselves into?

Because this new Lead Generation Card allows the instantaneous handing over of personal email addresses, could consumers be signing up to something they don’t really understand because of a spur-of-the-moment decision? Twitter has hopes to expand the Lead Generation Card globally to small and medium –sized businesses. Although, if this idea goes global, could people accidentally sign up for something that they don’t realise is not even available in their country?

We live in a fast-paced generation. Anything that takes longer than two minutes is a no-go, so this idea is really just the thing advertisers need for their clients. However, we are also living in a generation of quick-clickers; people who don’t read the fine print and just click because of the big shiny picture that caught their attention. Only time will be able to illustrate the success or failure of this new idea. Of course, it is still important to try to jump on the bandwagon and be a part of the craze if it has possibilities of generating more customers. You already have Twitter, so what’s the harm?

By Content Manager - Astrid Hall - @AstridGiraffeSM

3 Must know Social Media & Content Marketing facts for 2014…

Social Media is now a Full Time Position

If you look at any leading brand successfully utilising social media, they will usually have a social media executive or manager running the show behind the scenes. Sometimes social media accounts are even run by entire teams of people, given the growing thirst for answers and more regular updates.

As a direct result of this, the modern day marketing department has had to evolve to cater for a new breed of audience; sure we are still the same audience, but our collective desire to capture and retain more new and relevant information is growing stronger by the day. I believe this is due (in part) to the ever increasing mass of content that is now made available to us every day online.

Infographic stat bubbles

Social AND content marketing have now overtaken SEO, email and display as the Digital marketing priorities for 2014…

The game has changed, but that should be viewed as a very positive thing. Thousands of contacts and potential customers are just waiting for you to reach out to them if approached in the right way. So its game over to the drafting / planning of letters and that bulk marketing email, these days we can reach 10,000 likeminded people with a message and a mouse click in less than 3 seconds… (Although in some instances only in 140 characters or less…)

We’re not suggesting for a second these other mediums are now completely dead! Far from it! Like all elements of the wider marketing landscape, they can all still be used to compliment and enhance one another’s success rate if used together correctly.

Even at this point though, we can start to understand why so many businesses now view social media as a full time role within their own organisations. If you are reading this and you happen to run a business, then you may already know only too well the challenges involved with trying to juggle running a business and successfully managing your social accounts. It can be tough, frustrating and at times quite stressful…

Well the bad news (or ‘good’ - in our view!) is that it isn’t going away…

Usage Stats Graph

Above: A Forecast of Marketing Spend Increases for B2B & B2C businesses in the UK for 2014.

 

Google is showing us how it wants us to use social media

Google Logo

 Google wants us to stop thinking about keywords and more about helping people. Therefore the only way to ‘rank’ (if that’s even an applicable term anymore) is to create great content, optimise it and make it shareable. Social media has allowed us to take complete control of the latter, which leaves only the content writing itself.

You need someone who can deliver targeted articles, to the highest possible standard and in record time. Businesses need to embrace social media and start thinking seriously about their content and where it’s going to come from.

Only when you have a solid content marketing process in place, will your articles and / pages begin to ‘rank’. More importantly the more articles you can generate that are able to achieve new ranking positions, the more visible your website will become. Maintain this trend, increase the visibility and reach of your website and champion the promotion of great content; by the time you are done, appearing sporadically for just a handful of vanity keywords will have become a thing of the past.

 

Misconceptions of Public Relations

PR

When we hear the term ‘public relations’, we all have our own ideas of what it is. Some of us believe that a life in PR means mingling with socialites and having a job that is more fun than work, but it is much more than that.

PR and advertising

The first misunderstanding when it comes to PR is its confusion with advertising; they are not the same. Advertising projects ideas from the business to the consumer to help promote and market news ideas or concepts. Public relations, however, is how a business communicates back and forth with the consumer. Public relations are also not always about the consumer itself but about managing how the press and media portray the business. People in the PR sector will produce press packs and press releases to forward onto journalists, but again, this is different from advertising as journalists are able to communicate directly with the company for more information. With advertising, we are simply given a limited portion of information that we are supposed to be drawn into and learn a lot from a little.

You’re a social butterfly

The phrase itself, ‘public relations’, implies that those working in that sector must be outgoing and constantly networking to help a company. Yet again, there is more to it than going to bars and drinking cocktails in order to secure a few more connections. Creativity is crucial to PR, which is another way the lines can blur between PR and advertising. In PR, you must be imaginative enough to produce enthralling press releases that grab a journalist’s attention within the first sentence. The same with information and press packs. They must be jammed with information whilst still being clear, concise and appealing to the eye. A press pack must portray the company or idea to help get media recognition.

The truth as we know it

Some may believe that PR people will say anything to secure consumers trust, but this is quite the opposite. PR are there to help build a brand and an identity. If all they say turns out to be lies, then that brand identity will be instantly thwarted. PR people work round the clock to ensure a trusted company identity is being built and circulated around both the consumer and the media.

It’s a piece of cake

It might be initially believed that those in PR just doss about calling clients, producing press releases and keeping everyone happy. When in reality, they are chasing up clients who are not making their wants and needs clear. Keeping on top of deadlines, answering constant questions and pestering, producing, yet another, press release or press pack, which can take a great deal of time if done effectively. PR relies on clients or other people, which as most people will understand, does not make a job easy when you are awaiting a reply the last minute before a deadline.

Media platforms are growing

 With social media on the rise, PR has to keep connected to every site that allows for social networking. PR people have to keep an eye on complaints being made on sites such as Twitter to get in a quick response to ensure a brand identity is not being damaged. The millions of ways that news can travel in this modern age makes it more and more difficult for PR to cover every inch of what is being said on the Internet. Keeping the customer happy in every aspect is essential to PR. If you were a restaurant chain and saw a bad review on Tripadvisor, you would make it your goal to ensure the reviewer does not feel dissatisfied post-experience.

Overall, public relations covers a lot more ground than its given credit, but it is different from the marketing sectors of a business. Experience, knowledge and creativity are all essential qualities that a person in PR should have. PR comes in many shapes and sizes for any business, charity or council. Good PR is how you know, as a consumer, that a business cares for it’s customers.

By Content Manager - Astrid Hall - @AstridGiraffeSM

Making the most of cloud storage space

cloud

What is cloud storage?

I’m sure you’re all familiar with cloud storage but if you’re not, it’s one of the emerging pieces of technology at the moment. Many have debated the actual term ‘cloud’, saying it should really just be called the Internet. In very basic terminology, cloud storage is a way to save information, which is then stored in ‘cyber space’. It’s worth getting on board with cloud storage as it’s a lot easier to back everything up to a centralised hub, rather than the traditional flash drive/hard drive option backups. With cloud computing, you can access files anywhere, anytime – perfect, considering computers tend to have a habit of breaking at the most irritating of times.

What are some of the ways I can use cloud storage?

As you’ll soon discover, there are endless ways to make the most of the cloud, depending on what your needs might be. Ranging from financial budgeting to email synchronising; there’s something for everyone and every business.

Cloud storage is everywhere; even sites like Facebook are considered to be using cloud storage within the page.

There are so many companies you can use, from Google Drive, Microsoft, iCloud and Dropbox, just to name a few – all offering their unique advantages.

Photo and video storage: We live in a rich multi-media time in the digital age. It’s worth noting that you probably won’t be able to store every single one of your photos and videos, but you’ll be able to back up the important ones at least. Remember, the companies offering the storage are doing it for free, so they need to make their money from other places. Between 2GB and 5GB is a typical allowance you’ll find. The iCloud is a great feature to set up on your iPhone. It automatically synchronises your phone to the cloud and then you’re all set, every new photo/video you take will ping back to the cloud as a back up.

Cloud based email service:  The desktop-based email is quickly vanishing. In my opinion, email is possibly the most important facility we use in our day-to-day lives. The three main vendors you can chose from are Yahoo Mail, Google Mail and Hotmail Live.  Any of these three work very well on all devices. My personal favourite is Google Mail as you can use Google Drive too – a very useful piece of kit. Email almost serves as its own cloud storage, as you can flag important emails containing attachments and come back to them at your convenience on your phone, tablet or laptop.

Music: If you listen to a lot of music, it’d be a wise move to get the Google Play or Amazon Cloud Player. As you know, saving music to a hard drive takes up a lot of space in the memory capacity. Music has become a significant part of our lives, even in the workplace – so it’s a great idea to set this up to keep the office going.

Store and synchronise your work/study files: Dropbox seems to be the obvious choice for general work and life files you have. Dropbox seems very popular with university students when taking part in group work, sharing word documents between peers for presentations. The cloud computing really comes into its own here. Remembering to bring a USB on your travels is easier said than done. You can set up Dropbox to run automatic updates, this is great if you’re working on a presentation or a long piece of work. It means that if your computer crashes, you won’t lose all your work, as it’ll periodically save to the cloud. Dropbox features options to invite friends to the storage space, which in turn, gives you more free space for yourself.

It’s important to play around with all the different options available to you on the web. Ultimately, it’s only going to cost you time, rather than money, to figure out what you like and what you don’t.

You should embrace the cloud; it’s there to make your life easier in your day-to-day activities and to take away the stress of losing all of your vital information. It allows for access from anywhere with an Internet connection, so no more lugging around those heavy folders and files. The cloud has gone past the early adoption stage now, so it’ll be interesting to see what new developments arise in the future.

By Content Assistant - David Edward Rose - @davidrose88

5 Signs it is time to Outsource your Social Media Marketing…

More and more businesses are realising how important it is to utilise and harness the power of social media. It can be a great way to send your message out to the broader audience and get maximum traction for your product and / or service. Equally it’s can be an ‘easy access’ channel for free flowing, high quality communication between a company and its customers.

But what happens when social media becomes a full time role? And when is it time to hand over the reigns to an agency? 

looking-bad-feature-540x264-social-media

1: People are saying nasty things. Or worse… nothing at all

You’ve just proudly put the finishing touches on your new business FB page, you launch it on the news feed for all your friends and clients to ‘Like’ and bang… Someone posts a negative comment about a bad experience or even the business itself from 2 years ago...

What do you do?

Or how about you’ve had an account up for a week now and the page has 6 likes, you’ve posted several articles that you’ve painstakingly prepared, but nobody seems to be seeing, sharing or talking about them…

Why?

Social media is a bit of an online tombola, in terms of never really knowing what you are going to get! So taking the time to plan for negative sentiment is something that unfortunately gets altogether overlooked sometimes and this has lead to some social media howlers over the years.

It is equally important to stage your social activity, build and nurture a pipeline of users and then approach them with targeted, original and engaging content when they have demonstrated an interest in you and not just when you want to generate one.

Different objectives require different approaches, so knowing when to seek the help and guidance of an expert could be the key to success and could potentially lead to the successful aversion of any yet unforeseen disasters.

If you are thinking about starting a social media campaign, prepare as much for responding to negative sentiment as you will for the positive.

2: You are struggling to maintain continuity

Sometimes when businesses take the decision to manage their social media accounts internally,  accounts can change hands and you end up with various people posting at various times and no real continuity between the posts and overall messaging.

When you work with a specialist, they should take the time to get to know you, your business, your message and how you like to be represented online. If your website is very informative, professional and full of plain facts, but the accompanying social accounts are bouncy, fun and sharing pictures of cats wearing clothes… then let’s be honest there is some way to go to get back on message!

Ensuring that you are consistent with your messaging and that your content is really driving your social media and search marketing strategies going forward is the key. 

3: Less is more… but really it’s the quality that counts

Theres nothing worse than the serial ‘bumf’ tweeter when it comes to perusing any social media timeline. It could be a recruitment company or an estate agent, but there really is nothing more frustrating than the company that uses Twitter or any other social account as just an extension of their lettings list or job board.

@RecruitmentAgency: Vacancy – Leicester – F/t click the link for details

<Facepalm>

So many are still of the mindset that it’s an ‘amount’ of tweets or posts you need to send in a day and not the quality of them. So companies still evaluate the cost of their social marketing campaigns based against the ‘number of’ posts they get for their money and not the contents of the actual posts themselves. Which is actually the all important bit.

This is where you need a specialist to come in and devise not only a social schedule and process plan to follow, but also an editorial calendar, which is designed around you and your upcoming targets for the year / month / quarter or even week. Once you have the content, it’s all about sharing it in the right places, at the right times and with the correct audiences.

You have to make content work for you; you must promote it, nurture it and drive it along the sales funnel in order to generate the desired end result.

Common-Social-Media-Mistakes-Businessses-Make

4: Cat got your tongue? 

You’ve had a hectic weekend; it’s Monday morning and you have a business to run. A reminder pops up on your screen prompting you to prepare the week’s web content and plan your tweets around it. Great.., now all you need is to come up with some ideas to talk about…

Stumped?

Don’t worry, that’s normal. Knowing what to write, when and how your content can be used to benefit your entire search marketing strategy is very challenging. When you have lots to do and you find yourself under pressure to get articles posted, it can be really tough finding the time and / or motivation to write new and compelling material.

At this stage we would advise you not to. This is definitely the time to at least have a conversation with an experienced content writer and get a feel for what the cost implications of outsourcing content work might be. You might be surprised and having the stress of preparing and planning new content week in week out removed from your day to day will give you more time to do what you are good at… like running a business!! 

5: Be Original and have personality

There’s nothing wrong with having a bit of fun in social as long as you have your practices and processes in place. You can have personality, charm and humility in social and you will find that this works wonders for brand engagement, without lowering the tone or quality of your online reputation - if executed correctly.

Working with a specialist to define character and tone can be a very valuable exercise that pays massive dividends in the long haul. Work with someone you trust and ask as many questions as you like! These are the experts, they should not have a problem addressing your issues and answering your queries.

We like to believe and behave like we are an extension to our own clients businesses. That’s why it is so important to us that we get to know our customers and that we fully understand their objectives before proceeding with any new social media or content marketing campaign with them.

If you are experiencing any of the difficulties highlighted in this article or if you have any questions or queries about anything I have mentioned, then give us a call and we will do all we can to help.

We hope that in some way this article helps you with your ongoing efforts in 2014.

Happy ‘VAL£NTINE$’ Day…

Marius-the-giraffe-who-was-killed-by-Copenhagen-Zoo-despite-offers-to-re-home-him-3128409So Valentine’s Day is upon us and it’s time for millions to once again dote on one another, spend time and exchange various gifts…

‘Love don’t cost a thing…’

Men in America spent over $34million on Dining out for Valentine’s Day last year; the Aussies spent a staggering $49million - on their pets!! And don’t think for a second that we aren’t just as wrapped up in the madness as the rest of the world, Love struck Brits are predicted to have spent £978million already on Valentines gifts this year, which is an impressive 10% increase on the figures reported for the same period at this time last year.

If we take that figure and break it down between guys and girls in the UK, that’s 64 million people approximately, of which 47% (according to a 2011 census) are married or civilly partnered. Now to keep it fair let’s just assume that of these remaining 32 million people, only half of them actually take part and participate in the whole Valentines thing (and that’s being generous!) That’s still 16 million people left… So here’s an interesting idea…

Giraffe Text Giraffe and Coin

 

We’re serious! We found this great charity called ‘The Giraffe Conservation Foundation’ and they do loads of great work looking after Giraffe all over the world. You can find out more about them here:

http://www.giraffeconservation.org/

On average, Brits are predicted to be spending around £50 each this Valentine’s Day.  1% of £50 is 50p, 50p multiplied by 16 million people would be £8million raised… for the Giraffe!

Now you may at this point be wondering what a Giraffe could possibly want with your 50p and that’s a fair observation... We guess being Giraffe ourselves, we share a deep feeling of responsibility for all other Giraffe and the continuation of their ongoing conservation! But all jokes aside, whichever charitable cause you decide to support, 1% really is nothing and collectively it would make a difference.

We've already picked ours and here is their Just Giving page:

http://www.justgiving.com/giraffeconservation/donate

By now most people will be well aware of Marius the Giraffe and will have seen the numerous action groups, news articles and messages of support being circulated online. Marius’s story is a really shocking one that has touched the entire world. It was also unfortunately just one example of Giraffe being mistreated. ‘The Giraffe Conservation Foundation’ protect and preserve Giraffe populations all over the world through their many global projects and initiatives. With our help, we hope that they can continue to do so for many more years to come.

Choosing our cause was easy, because we love Giraffe (Naturally!) and we wanted to ensure that we were doing our bit to prevent further abuse in the future. We would welcome anyone else’s support for what is a really worthy cause.

Long live the mighty Giraffe! 

 

Five radical developments in business online marketing from 2004-2014

marketing

The internet is an amazing thing. It has really changed the spectrum on how marketers can promote their business to the masses. It doesn’t matter if you’re marketing a global fashion company from New York, or a small pluming company in Leicester – your audience need to know who you are and how you can help them.

Consumers have become a lot savvier in their approach to buying, predominantly due to the internet. This has in turn led to marketers needing to be far more creative than they were ten years ago.  The smarter digital marketers will be aware of the new ways in which they can promote their business activity.

It has become difficult for marketers to understand where to invest their time, knowledge and money to derive the best return on investment. Five or ten years ago, the online marketing world was very different. Long gone are the days of paid search ads, and search engine optimisation on their own. There are so many forms of online marketing that exist in 2014. Search has changed in a big way.

Development 1: Social Media has enabled a new medium of promoting – Now that Social media has really taken off past the adoption stage, online marketing has been boosted in an immense way. When the first social media platforms emerged, I don’t think any of the founders really expected they could go from being a personal site of sharing information with friends, to a serious way of promoting and engaging a business with its consumers.

Development 2: Very targeted approach to customers – As mentioned, consumers have a lot more information at their fingertips these days, for example, the ability to price compare products online within a matter of seconds. There are trillions of websites online, so it has become more difficult to grab the attention of existing and potential customers. More intelligent SEO is needed.

Development 3: Different platforms; mobile and second screening – Long gone are the days where marketers just targeted people using desktop. The second screen phenomenon has really grown over the last couple of years and is one of the key trends moving forward. Marketers have had to ensure content is engaging on a plethora of platforms. Consumers have become very fickle and demand entertainment across different platforms. Watching TV whilst speaking to someone on the phone and playing a game on a tablet has become only too common these days. It’s a battle to engage with consumers now, but if it’s done properly, the results are incredible.

Development 4: The employees have changed – The complexities of this new era of online marketing have developed into personnel too. Given the need for new avenues of marketing, such as blogging and social media – new job opportunities have arisen. Freelancers often work within house teams to get the best of both worlds.

Development 5: The cost of digital marketing – There is always going to be costs. Online marketing will cost more in the budget than traditional marketing these days. One of the big costs are hiring the social media team. Some people seem perplexed when they think of social media costing money. For an individual to use it, yes, it’s free. However, when a business uses it as a way of promoting themselves, they need to get the right people running the pages for them and potentially opting in for some of the premium add-ons. Social media has evolved from being far more than a way to engage with customers, it’s now a customer service team in its own right; answering queries or attempting to deal with complaints.

What will we see in the future? As technology is moving forward quicker than anyone could have predicted, who knows what will happen next. Mobile and second screen are the two big trends moving forward. Digital teams are going to have to utilise these two trends to stay on point.

It’s likely that online marketing will progress at a monumental rate in the years between 2014 – 2015 and beyond.

By Content Assistant - David Edward Rose - @davidrose88
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Name: Giraffe Social Media
Phone: 02392 363708
Skype: GiraffeSM
Address: 57 Albert Road, Southsea, Hampshire, PO5 2SF