Archive for category Thoughts & Opinions
The importance of social media to any e-commerce business
Posted by Paul McSweeney in E-Commerce, Facebook, Social Commerce, Social Media, Social Networking, Thoughts & Opinions on August 27th, 2010
We have all seen the explosion of corporations creating online communities, but let us take a look at how easy it can be to connect with your e-commerce customers and how important social media is to your customers.
First, we have to ask the question, how do you take the seemingly limitless social media conversations and turn them into actionable insights? Also, how can you understand what is being said and the context of those conversations?
Social media in any context offers incredibly good (and free) feedback on a variety of goods and services. Online Retailers need to use this information to their advantage. Using it to your advantage means using both the good and bad comments. Here are some practical tips we can take a look at. Most importantly, keep the conversation going and make sure your social media content is relevant and current. Do remember that the end goal is product sales and customer connections. Also, rekindle the passion for your brand consistently using social media methods. For example, if you a leading e-commerce website and you are involved in a social media forum, why not hold weekly or bi-weekly chat sessions about the experiences with ordering product via your site? You will get invaluable responses from doing something like this.
It is also very important to constantly think about the audience you are trying to go after, consider your age demographics, race, and gender as well. Who are the most likely people to purchase your products and who do you want to expand to? These are key points to remember when considering your marketplace.
It is really no surprise that online e-commerce businesses were one of the first groups to use social media to make their brand more social. They enabled customers to find out what their peers were thinking and provided valuable insight that could be viewed in “real time”.
Building a truly interactive social media community within an e-commerce platform is important as it creates a more efficient retail environment where customer opinions, relevant content and product information are freely distributed. It is only then that “social commerce” can happen.
To accomplish this, retailers must be able to integrate social media elements, such as social networking features and user generated platforms directly into their commerce environments.
As a result of this, online retailers can create and own a unique social experience that would encompass the entire customer lifecycle. Customers can than enjoy a more integrated shopping experience and retailers will see an increase in unique visitors to their online store that are “predisposed” to their marketing messages. This will streamline marketing efforts and lead to increased profits and decreased costs.
Social media allows empowering customers by enabling them to establish user profiles that pull in data and relationships to online stores. At this point customers can interact and provide you (the online retailer) invaluable customer feedback, and bring in potential new customers.
By building and maintaining vibrant communities that address the passion of the retailer’s core audience, and then spreading that passion to the larger social web, retailers will attract loyal and engaged customers, and will achieve better business results.
Social media is absolutely crucial to an online retailer’s success today. Social media allows you to engage a customer, get new business, and most importantly elicit invaluable customer feedback that will turn into increased sales.
Google is now going to compete with Skype
Posted by Paul McSweeney in Facebook, Social Commerce, Thoughts & Opinions on August 26th, 2010
This week, Google unveiled a feature that will enable its Gmail users to call landlines and mobile phones from their e-mail inbox. The new feature broadens Google’s growing array of communication products and creates a potent rival to Skype, which is preparing for an initial public offering.
Google faces an entrenched adversary. Last year, Skype became the leading carrier of international voice calls. In the year to June 30, Skype’s registered users rose from 397m to 560m. Gmail has just over 200m users.
But just 8.1m of Skype’s users pay for the service, and the company relies on these direct payments from these users for most of its revenues.
Google plans to undercut Skype’s prices. In a promotion designed to attract new users, calls to the US and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year. Calls to other countries will be as low as 2 cents per minute, and will not include a connection fee. The service will become available to US Gmail users in the coming days.
Google already offered Gmail users free voice and video calls to other Gmail users, and the company rolled out Google Voice, a call management programme, earlier this year.
In unveiling the feature, Google emphasised the ongoing convergence of traditional telecommunications and the web. “Given that most of us don’t spend all day in front of our computers, we thought, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if you could call people directly on their phones
Analysts said it was too early to tell if low prices and the convenience of the inbox would allow Google to lure users away from Skype. Skype users are tremendously loyal; so it will be interesting to see how this pans out.
Online sales on the up
Posted by Paul McSweeney in E-Commerce, Thoughts & Opinions on August 20th, 2010
Internet sales grew in July at their fastest pace since before the recession, as wet weather encouraged home shopping, a survey suggests.
Online sales grew by 18% in the month compared with a year earlier, the biggest jump since 2007, IMRG said.
UK shoppers spent £5bn online in July, more than in any other month this year, it added.
Figures published on Thursday showed total UK retail sales rising much faster than expected in July.
Sales volumes jumped 1.1% compared with June, the Office for National Statistics said, with almost all non-food sectors showing strong growth.
World Cup dip
The average UK shopper spent £81 online in July, with promotions and discounts also boosting spending.
Travel sales rose by a third compared with a year earlier, as people looked to escape the rain and head for sunnier climes, said IMRG, the industry body for global internet retailing.
This more than offset a fall in alcohol sales, caused perhaps by England’s disappointing performance in the football World Cup, the group said.
“Although online retail sales survived the recession more convincingly than High Street sales, the last two years or so have no doubt been shaky at times,” said Chris Webster, head of retail consulting and technology at Capgemini, which publishes the online sales index with IMRG.
“It is really encouraging to see growth levels returning to those seen pre-2007 and before consumer confidence was knocked by the financial crisis and the recession.”
The IMRG Capgemini Index tracks online sales at more than 100 retailers across the UK.
Social Media..a recognised source now for news junkies!
Posted by Paul McSweeney in Facebook, Social Media, Thoughts & Opinions on August 19th, 2010
According to a study conducted by United Kingdom based iCD Research, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are catching up to major news websites when it comes to which source users turn to for breaking news.
The picture is not at all bad for traditional newspapers, which are managing to stay afloat despite heavy declines in their standard circulations, but the research results do provide the latest illustration of how the worlds of new and old media continue to collide.
Social Network Use Shoots Up
Based on results from the 1,000-person survey, conducted exclusively in the United Kingdom, 50.4 percent of consumers still favor the BBC website as their primary breaking-news platform, but social media tops all other contenders, coming in at a strong second with 18.4 percent.
As more and more people log on to social networks (Facebook recently eclipsed 500 million users) for more and more time each day (jumping from roughly 3 to 5.5 hours a month during 2009, the Nielsen Co. reported earlier this year via Marketing Charts), it should not be surprising that their news-consumption habits should migrate to social media networks as well.
Dead-Tree Media Still Standing, But On Uneven Footing
The report dovetails with increasing fears over the fate of the traditional “dead-tree” publications. Newspaper circulation in the developed world dropped precipitously between 2007 and 2009 (by 30 percent in the U.S. and 25 percent in the U.K., respectively, according to one estimate). News websites have been seen as the next logical means for those outlets to hang onto readers, and this year started out better than any in a long time for newspapers in that sense, with properties attracting record traffic to their websites in the first quarter of the year.
Of course, social media continues to change the game: In the iCD study, not a single British newspaper website topped the social media category, with the pay-walled Times of London website receiving a paltry 5.4 percent in support.
The Great Tumblr Rush
Interestingly, while many traditional media organizations are attempting to use Facebook and Twitter to redirect traffic to their main sites (with less-than-stellar results, at best), there is one, lesser-known, less-trafficked social media platform that has lately become something of a magnet for news websites, despite its novelty and unfamiliarity: Tumblr — the weird microblog platform that fills a niche somewhere between Facebook and Twitter and eschews the now-standard comment threads in favor of a “reblog” option.
Traditional media heavy hitters such as The New York Times and The Atlantic are reportedly having “a field day” on Tumblr. But the definition of a “field day” in this case may be a bit overstated. So far, many of the websites have simply staked out domains on the service (ironically, the financially strapped Newsweek was one of the first, and so far few, to actually carve out a decent Tumblr-exclusive content presence), so it remains to be seen just how they will employ it and how effective it will be at drawing readers to their main websites.
Tablet Gamble
Add to that today’s revelation that News Corp. publisher Rupert Murdoch will launch an all-digital U.S. “national newspaper” specifically formatted for mobile and tablet devices such as the iPad, and what you have is … well, an unprecedented new/old-media collision, in which a sustainable 21st century business model remains as elusive as ever.
Of course, there are diehard holdouts to all of this newfangled social-media mumbo-jumbo. Among the respondents to the British study, 276 indicated that they straight up “do not get their news from the Internet.” Maybe they are waiting for someone to get it right?
Its sensible to embrace Online reputation management
Posted by Paul McSweeney in Facebook, Social Networking, Thoughts & Opinions, Twitter on August 18th, 2010
If you are the owner of a business you may already be aware of how your potential customers are using the internet as a way to help them make decisions on which product and brand to purchase. Whether you own the business or if it is part of your job title, you must remain aware of what your current and potential customers are saying, who they are saying it to, and where.
You need to either be trained in this ability yourself or at least be aware of the tools you can use to help manage the reputation of your business. Online reputation management is a key aspect of running a business in today’s environment and it will probably become more and more important as more people use the internet to help them decide on products and services.
Of course it could be that your business or organization currently has an excellent reputation. Perhaps your support team, your sales group, and other customer-facing pieces of your business do a wonderful job and their efforts are reflected as such on the internet. While this may be true, you have to know for certain this is the case. Guessing is not wise.
If, on the other hand, you have a bad online reputation, deserved or not, you need to know. Perhaps there was an incident that caused a pain for one of your customers, or maybe your competition is being malicious. Either way you must be up to speed on what is being said, where they are saying it, and what your options might be.
If you are going to run a successful business in today’s internet environment you will need to be aware of both the good and the bad things that people are saying about your products and services. You will need to recognize the way these comments can help to determine your company’s bottom line at the end of every month.
With the popularity of the internet all it takes is one bad apple, so to speak, perhaps even something typed as a joke on a social networking site, to bring your reputation down considerably. News travels fast on the internet, and bad news travels even faster, and consumers will stick together if they believe a company has taken advantage of a customer.
Managing your reputation online is not a single action but rather a process. This includes maintaining high visibility, positive publicity, and the right kind of marketing. They move beyond the negative you need to do everything within your power to gain high web site rankings from search engines. This can help to keep the negative comments off the first page of search results.
You will find it necessary to keep a close eye on the opinion of the public. Watching social networks and blogs are essential. You will have to take a long look at the comments being made and you must make every effort to protect and defend your company’s trademark and logo.
As you research online reputation management you will find there are a number of companies available to help you keep your reputation clean or help you cleanse one that has been tarnished. Find out what each company offers and consider using one to help you manage your business image and reputation. Remember that information on the web travels fast and you need to be one step ahead of those who might seek to affect your bottom line in a negative way.
Social media is there for you to build your online reputation!
Posted by Paul McSweeney in Facebook, Social Media, Social Networking, Thoughts & Opinions on August 16th, 2010
Most large companies have already realised this and make use of Facebook, MySpace, etc. to reinforce their online presence, but a shocking number of PR specialists and business owners are still not using social media to their full advantage.
For every person that “adds” your company, in whatever social website environment, you know that all their friends will see that they have expressed an interest – great news for your online reputation. Some will be curious and check your business out for themselves, and this is the key to social media; if you can get one person’s attention, you can get the attention of their friends without trying.
The first thing to tackle, obviously, is finding people who are likely to take an interest in your company from a social media angle. This might be quite easy if you are a small business – since you probably already have a large number of Facebook friends (or similar) that might be happy to register their interest in your company’s profile page. If this doesn’t sound like it will work for you, why not offer your existing customers an incentive for following your business online? Maybe a link to a printable voucher every week.
Once you have a following, it is only a matter of interacting with them and producing content that will either get them talking or get them interested in what your business has to offer. If you have the sort of business that relies on repeat custom, then you are in the ideal position to offer special deals to your social media followers. If not, simply send individualised messages to your followers until they are willingly interacting with the discussions on your business’s main page – and if you don’t know what to talk about, you can always hire a writer to take care of your online reputation!
Interacting with people is what reputation management is all about at its most essential level. Your online reputation will hinge upon your ability to stay in touch with at least a small sample of your market and keep abreast of what they want. Using Facebook, or Bebo, or any other website to create a small following is a fantastic way of keeping a sample of people on hand to give you feedback about your business. The most important thing of all though, is that once you have gotten involved in social media your reputation (whether good or bad) will become wider.
We can help you build and then manage your online reputation. Simply get in touch, and let us see how we can work together.
Making the social media opportunities work for you
Posted by Paul McSweeney in E Mail Marketing, Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media, Social Networking, Thoughts & Opinions on August 9th, 2010
One of your main online marketing strategies should be through Social Media outlets.
Why?
Because it’s 2010 and that’s just how it’s done. When using Social Media sites your main focus should be on sending direct targeted traffic to your site, building an arsenal of quality back links, generating online exposure by strengthening your websites online presence, attracting potential clients/users, shining a light on whatever it is you’re providing and building trust.
The four main pillars of social media that you should focus on are:
- Blogs
- Social Networking Sites
- Social Bookmarking Sites
- Forums
Social Media: Blogs
First if you don’t already have one, you’ll need to set up your websites blog that you will also need to optimize for the search engines: You’ll need it to connect to an array of services that will help get the word out about new content on the blog and site via the blogs RSS feed. You can then submit the RSS feed to a number of popular RSS aggregators that relay snippets of recent blog posts made and a link.
You’ll also use the site’s blog to generate exposure for the website through social media news sites such as Technorati and others like it. With a blog, people are more likely to link back to articles posted which in turn would help the site’s overall authority in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) and Page Rank.
Social Network Sites
Networking is the key to any online marketing strategy, as it brings us that much closer to our targeted audience, and one-to-one with potential clients. Through Social Networking sites you should generate a following, a reader base, and interact with them in a way that will help shine the spot light on the company or product/service you’re offering.
A few of these sites include:
- Tumblr
- Myspace
- PartnerUp
- Qapacity
- Ryze
- Talkbiznow
Search engine spiders troll these sites looking for links to something new and relevant so you should always utilize all the profile pages on these sites. You can easily do this by placing you site’s link and a bio where appropriate. Remember, keep your bios keyword rich and targeted but not spammy, that’s the key. With twitter for example, the Bio in your profile ends up being your profile pages description so keep things like that in mind.
Social Bookmarking Sites
These are an entirely different breed of social media sites and often confused with social networks. With social bookmarking sites, you end up generating exposure for the individual blog posts and articles. This is done by creating accounts on the top social bookmarking sites and submitting your article links as interesting to read content and spreading the word that way. Among those sites are a few popular bookmark giants such as:
- Delicious
- StumbleUpon
- Digg
Remember, the key to making any Social Media campaign work is interaction and one-on-one marketing rather than mass marketing and spamming people.
Forums
Further exposure can be achieved by registering on some of the web’s most popular forums, posting a few relevant threads, posts and general topics then adding links to your site/blog in both the forum signature and profile. DON’T join a community to spam them or talk incessantly about your website or business because like any community, listening, commenting, and making a genuine contribution here and there would yield better results and land you more potential clients, especially when people search for your business and find knowledgeable individuals representing your company helping others in the same industry online. It’s all about becoming an industry professional online!
In addition to forum marketing, you can also tap into e-mail based discussion lists and groups.
If you need any advice on how to maximise these different options for the benefit of your business, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us on 01694 724 899.
Social media at work…yes or no?
Posted by Paul McSweeney in Social Media, Thoughts & Opinions on August 7th, 2010
According to the Washington Post newspaper, employees who fritter time away on Facebook, Twitter and other social media Web sites are costing British businesses billions, new research suggests.
British employment website MyJobGroup.co.uk said it polled 1,000 British workers and found that nearly six percent, or 2 million, of the UK’s 34 million-strong workforce spent over an hour per day on social media while at work, amounting to more than one eighth of their entire working day.
“Our results clearly show that UK workers are spending increased time whilst at work on social media networks, which, left unchecked, could have negative repercussions on the productivity of many companies across the country,”
MyJobGroup.co.uk said that work time lost on Facebook, Twitter and other social media networks could potentially be costing Britain up to 14 billion pounds ($22.16 billion).
The research showed more than half of British workers (55 percent) confessed to accessing social media profiles at work, with many spending so much time friending, tweeting, adding photos and video, as well as updating their profiles, that companies’ productivity was suffering as a result.
Despite the negative effects on the economy in the midst of a fragile recovery, many workers polled were in denial about the ill-effects of social media on their efficiency. Only 14 percent of respondents admitted to being less productive as a result of social media and 10 percent even claimed social media had made them more productive.
What’s more, there was still widespread resistance to banning access to social networks at work, with over two thirds (68 percent) advocating some form of access during working hours. Only one third wanted sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube barred during work time, demonstrating the growing importance of social media to the daily routine and the widespread resistance to its access being limited.
“Whilst we’re certainly not kill-joys, people spending over an hour per day in work time on the likes of Facebook and Twitter are seriously hampering companies’ efforts to boost productivity, which is more important than ever given the fragile state of our economy,” a spokesman for MyJobGroup said.
Companies would do well to monitor use of social networking sites during work hours and ensure that their employees are not abusing their freedom of access to these sites.
What is your take on this? Are we taking our jobs for granted by accessing social media profiles at work? Please let us know with your comments.
5 of the biggest online reputation management mistakes
Posted by Paul McSweeney in Social Media, Social Networking, Thoughts & Opinions on August 5th, 2010
Not Listening: The biggest mistake that companies make is either to not listen to customers at all or monitor very few social media channels.
- Not Listening to Customers: Customers can be a source of ideas, feedback, complaints and insights. Listening to customers has numerous advantages, most important of which being that it helps to better understand consumer demand, their likes and dislikes and it also helps in discovering new trends in your industry.
- Monitoring very few social media channels can be a problem as well. Facebook & Twitter is not the end of the web, there are numerous other channels that may be equally if not more important from your perspective/ for your business. Ideally you should use a free tool that will help you monitor most important social media channels like blogs, image and video sharing sites, wikis, micro blogging sites, customer forums, consumer complaint sites etc.
Responding to everything: Most companies work with limited resources, so its advisable that you prioritize what you monitor and prioritize the conversations that you want to be a part of.
This is what we advise:
- If it’s a complaint – definitely acknowledge it. Don’t ignore it just because someone does not like your product or services. Ideally put out a solution through the same medium at the earliest. Don’t forget, the solution is not only for the user who has posted the complaint but for the thousands of other users who will stumble upon the page in the future. At the same time include the steps you are taking to avoid similar mistakes in the future.
- If the complaint is false – make sure you correct the facts in public.
- If it’s a general conversation – gauge who has started the conversation, where the conversation is hosted and how well you can contribute to it. For example, give Yahoo answers preference, because its well visited, and visible on search engines.
Not planning for the future: Online Reputation Management is not only about reacting to an online attack/bad review/negative comment but its also being proactive. It’s about building reputation. An important strategy we use to be proactive with online reputation Management is to work towards disincentivizing users from sharing on public forums. Don’t cheat the consumer but create value for users to come to you first and then reward them through a faster and better service.
Being dishonest: This is something we see each day. Companies using fake identities to post positive reviews about themselves, their products and services on social media sites. In this social media age where everything is so transparent do you really think you can fool someone? More often than not these fake reviews and fake identities will come back to haunt you so be very careful. If you do want to engage in a conversation use your genuine identity.
Being Disrespectful: Some companies do not take negative feedback very well. You should get used to this and not threaten to take legal action every time someone speaks ill of you. Firstly taking legal action costs a lot of precious money, which can be used for other more useful purposes. Secondly, threatening users on the web will get the attention of bloggers and in this social media age you don’t want to be on their bad books.
Social Networks and Gaming on the increase
Posted by Paul McSweeney in Social Media, Social Networking, Thoughts & Opinions on August 4th, 2010
Chances are, you’re here by way of a status update on Facebook, a tweet on Twitter or some other method of sharing on a social network. A study released today by Nielsen – says that people now spend a quarter of all time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from just under 16% a year ago.
The study gives a breakdown of the top 10 online sectors according to how much time people spend using them, with social media and gaming leading the pack.
Among the top 10 sectors, only four have increased over the past year, with five losing ground and one remaining the same. The study shows that both social media and gaming have had the greatest increases over the past year, likely leading to drops in other areas, such as email and instant messaging, although communicating and networking still account for a little more than a third of people’s time online.
When it comes to mobile, the picture changes drastically, with email becoming the dominant sector, followed by portals and then social networking and blogs. The report doesn’t offer much detail in what it means by “mobile”, so we’re left wondering what types of mobile devices respondents are using and what this might mean for the time they spend. Nonetheless, email’s dominance in mobile would seem to indicate that, despite how much we message each other on Facebook, email still has a strong presence. Although email has seen a decline on the desktop, it is still the third heaviest activity online.
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