Hi Guys! Today I am going to talk about a new and powerful social button that every website must integrate. From a publisher’s perspective this is going to bring tones of traffic to your website; from a marketer’s perspective, this is going to drive your sales crazy and finally, from a web user’s perspective this is going to make your life easy and help you to choose or make a decision to buy a product suggested by your friends!
Imagine you are googling for some information on the web, and as a result you are presented with thousands of web pages with answers. On internet, there is always a lot of choice; this may confuse you to make a decision to rely on a particular website among the thousands that are available with their own versions of answers.
Have you ever felt; that it would have been really helpful if you knew which products, services or information sources on the internet your friends and peers recommended? Something very similar to the facebook like button? Yes, Google is planning for a “like” button for the entire web! Have look at the video:
If you own a blog or website then, sign up for your Google +1 button now! Sign up here
Hi folks, this is my sister @shataj's paintings, I will be publishing them one by one and here is the first one! This actually explains how we fight :)
Times have changed, your products have changed and so has your customer. With the advancement in technology over the last decade people have got more power to choose what to listen/see/read. The challenges of a marketeer have increased manifold. Below I have discussed the latest developments in the marketing world which every company should consider in their future decision making process. The old formula of “Pay to Play” has been replaced with ”Play to Play”, which means, a huge marketing budget is not necessary for running a successful marketing campaign. All we need is street-smart thinking and some tricky brain works!
Word of mouth marketing is the King
The age-old mantra of word of mouth marketing is as true today as it has always been. The only difference is that, before, word of mouth marketing happened during coffee breaks, water cooler talks, family gossips and generally when people met in person. Today in addition to all these avenues word of mouth marketing happens at a much faster rate via social media where people meet virtually!
In the world where we are surrounded by the internet, everything starts with a search and this is why search engine optimization or SEO is the buzz word today. Businesses want their products to be found online by as many people as possible and for that SEO is very important. Since it’s important to optimize your website or product so it can be be found online, it also calls for improving your digital footprint.
What does “improving digital footprint mean?”. It simply means to distribute your content in the web as much as possible, sticking with your website alone will not help. Give Google and other search engines as much scope as possible to search for your content. Upload a picture on flicker, upload a video on YouTube (officially the second largest search engine), build a community on twitter – to make people talk about your product, engage them; create facebook fan page for your business – make people “like” your product.
There are many millions of web pages available in the internet, Google and other search engines find them and, rank them based on a certain algorithm. Breaking that algorithm is what we call search engine optimization. The main drawback is that a capable SEO can make a poor website to rank well. Does this help the user experience? Many times while performing a search, you may get search results listings having pages that are very old and may not contain the information that you are looking for.
The other important thing that businesses have to keep in mind is that SEO may help their websites get huge traffic but getting traffic alone will not make your product sell. People may be able to find your product but who will convince them to buy it? You can make a number of claims that you are the best, but that’s not going to work with today’s empowered customers. Anyone can write and claim on the internet, why should they believe you? This is where social media comes into play, people want to know what others in the online world say about your product, do they “like” it? “recommend“ it or dump it? (Like and Recommend are features of facebook that enables users to add value to a conversation about anything and everything). Remember user reviews published on your website do not have much value these days however genuine it may be, because people believe that “anyone can write and claim anything on the internet”.
Today, social media plays a very important role in the decision making process while buying a product on_ or offline. Research shows that 78% people prefer peer recommendation to buy a product. That’s a huge number isn’t it! Imagine a status update on facebook “I bought a BMW and its awesome” along with a picture, the message spreads virally, people/friends on facebook start congratulating the owner of the car, ask questions, “like” etc etc. This is the new form of word of mouth marketing.
Buyer behavior on an e-commerce website:
Discovery
This refers to how people discover a product or service online. As I said at the beginning everything starts with a search, people search for a product via search engines, so the better search engine optimized your website is, the more digital footprints you have, the better. Other forms of discovery can be people finding a product via sponsored links, banner ads, Social Media and all other forms of web advertising.
Purchase Evaluation and Recommendation
Now that a product/service has been discovered online, the buyer has to make a decision to buy a product among the available choices and on internet the choices is vast! This is when the buyer searches for reviews and recommendations from people who have already used the product/service. Remember any claims from the company saying that their product is the best doesn’t have any value at all! The customer has become smart; he/she will search for what people are saying about a brand/product/service RIGHT NOW and not a review that’s two years old. This is where Google and other search engines are losing out – most of the time the search results from Google can be relevant but may not be up to-date or current. This is when people trust social media more for a real-time review than a Google search result from an SEO optimized website.
Want to know what REAL people are talking about a product/service/brand? Try Twitter search
Purchase and Review
After all the research the buyer is convinced about the product and makes the purchase, this is when the real test starts. The post purchase satisfaction is sure to make a huge difference. A review of the product - good or bad - will definitely make its way into Social Media in the form of tweet, facebook update, YouTube video, blog posts etc. The new form of word of mouth marketing is here. Also remember if you offer a bad product or service then you are finished because everyone will get to hear about it!
Today the real challenge of every marketeer is to make people talk about their products or services but reality is that people don’t like to be forced to talk about your product. The marketeer has to find a way to build conversation around a product or service, social media is the messiah of today’s marketeers, if done wisely you can control what people say about your product.
Search engine optimization and social media optimization should not be considered two extremes; they should be used in unison to achieve success in the marketing world. Google is making some serious changes in their search algorithm to cope with the social media revolution. Last year Google itself tried to jump on the social media band wagon in an attempt to compete with the likes of facebook and twitter. Google introduced “Google buzz” but it was an epic failure. The key learning for the big daddy of internet was not to go against the grain but to go with the wind. Nowadays you would have started noticing tweets being pulled up in search results along with SEO optimized pages. Welcome to the future of marketing….
“We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it” – Erik Qualman
Have a look at the below videos for some astounding facts.
Tamilnadu elections are fast approaching and the people of the state are having a real good time watching the entertainment unfold! Its freebies that rule! Every party is coming with promises of freebies that even the World Bank cannot fund. And it’s getting ugly day by day, what started with free TV in the last assembly election has grown to a new level in 2011. Free rice, mixie, grinder, fan, free public transport, gold jewellery for women, goats, cow, washing machine, fridge….the list goes on and on and on! Overjoyed by the enthusiasm, an independent candidate announced that he will give a free Tata Nano car to everyone if voted to power!
Courtesy - forum.santabanta.com
I just wonder how shameless politicians have become; the citizens of the country are treated like beggars. What’s interesting to note is that, none of the political party has come with a scheme to provide free education to children, is that a very costly promise to make? Don’t they think it’s the basic necessity for a better tomorrow for the next generation of this country?
With every freebie they promise the only intention is to make even more money. Want to know how? Ok, last election the star promise here was free television sets to everyone, yes they did give free TV, a TV that has a market value is just Rs 900 and that can blast anytime! Imagine the amount of bribe the TV vendor would have paid to the political party to get such a meaty tender! So in the name of free TV, the business man sold huge amount of low quality TV sets, the political party received bribe and funded their election expenses, got voted to power and even increased subscription of their home run cable TV service!
Even a Harvard business school graduate couldn’t have drawn a business plan like this. I get so pissed off the way politicians cheat people but at the same time the meticulous planning and thinking that goes behind cheating people is simply outstanding and admirable. There are many management lessons that you can learn from our politicians, they are simply unbeatable.
The election campaign is on; people are being purchased to attend the political rallies for a price of Rs 700, a 250ml liquor bottle and a packet of biryani. Sounds a sweet deal? The price has gone up this time, last assembly election it was only Rs 500 deal. There are many more to come to ruin the economy and the state. The entertainment our politicians offer is simply amazing, it will be really interesting to watch which freebie people liked most this year, because that will determine the next rulers of the state!
