Business will always look to take advantage of any opportunity to promote, advertise and generally sell their goods or services. Companies will claim to be ‘doing social’ when it simply sees social media as marketing strategies by another name.
Pasting Facebook and Twitter icons on the landing page and asking everybody just to ‘find’ and ‘follow you’ is not much of an incentive either to get involved with a brand!
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Grr! The truth is too annoying – and depressing! Especially for eCommerce and just about every other type of honest enterprise and organisation reliant on the internet to survive as a viable business. According to a recent study, it has been found that nearly a third of all website traffic is spam and may actually be causing harm rather than bringing new business prospects…
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Last year, Transport for London (TfL) announced it would begin the roll out of NFC readers across London’s tube and bus networks in 2012. The era of mobile commerce and contactless payments is about to step up a gear and kickstart the next phase of interactive, on-the-move user engagement. Optimising your website for mobile is now key to offline / online eCommerce.
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Some businesses think that social media is straightforward enough. “Just do it” – seems to be the extent of a search and social policy! But as soon as a business begins to explore social media they soon realise that audience engagement does not happen overnight and a considerable amount of time, experience and expertise is necessary to be invested before an eCommerce presence is accepted, let alone acknowledged.
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Interest by some site owners in ‘doing’ social media comes in several variations of the same mindset!. The thinking is “Yep, let’s have a Facebook page, open a Twitter account – everyone else seems to be doing it… it’s free advertising and we might get a few customers out of it, you never know …”
That’s right – they’ve still not got it yet! Engagement through social is not free – neither is it an online marketing extra. Social presence means commitment at a new level …
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You would imagine that anybody in business in 2012 would at least have some form of basic presence online – f’rinstance – a website? Er – no, not according to Google who say that just under 40 per cent of businesses, on average in the UK, sell their goods or service via a website. Apparently, in Wales, the figure is less with only a third of businesses online!
Now there’s lovely for you …!
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There are some things customers prefer to keep to themselves and other things they feel comfortable to share! Especially with specific items they buy!
Studies looking into social media behaviour reflect the natural but often overlooked differences each consumer might display according to every purchasing decision.
After all, do they want all their circle of friends to know the material and colour of their latest pair of boxer shorts or knickers? Or that they use mouthwash or skin cleansing cream everyday?
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Honest, warm and friendly! The most successful marketing strategies are always a response to a need. From simply being amusing or supplying a nugget of pure info gold to announcing a killer giveaway deal, the intention is to encourage trust, gain brand credibility and site authority as a key vital source of relevant content sharing. The same principle applies to all company messages, including everyday email marketing.
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Erased all your Google search history yet? Padlocked your laptop, ripped out the ethernet cable, hiding under the duvet?
Calm down dear, it’s only search and social integration – not the secret police!
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Pinterest continues to spark all manner of glittering social media attention! It’s as if the 11.7 million users now ‘pinning’ their content onto the interest-sharing bullet-board is a sign that Facebook is about to be blown out of the water any day now! Duh – don’t think so!
But rather than taking Pinterest with a pinch of salt, perhaps the site should be seen as a sign of social things to come …
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Many of you reading this will have already spotted the small but significant step Google took last week in their continuing transformation from search engine to search and social network! Google have now added a Google+ share button and notification box to its home page and for all search results. Proof positive that social media influences ranking …
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Some business owners still regard their website as bit of an online brochure that “you’ve got to have these days along with Twitter and Facebook and all the rest of it”. They still think that it’s mostly a showcase trophy, which they see as useful for attracting browsing traffic while the ‘real business’ carries on as usual by telephone or email!
The attitude is obvious by the overall design, which is more a reflection of the business owner’s idea of how the site should look or the result of cheap and cheerful open source site design software!
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