Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Google+: a One Hit Wonder or a Classic?

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Following up to Google+’s buzz these past couple of weeks, an article that was originally published in the San Jose Mercury News by Mike Swift covered the surge of popularity that Google+ is getting. Noting that this is Google’s fourth try at social networking, Google+ has reached 20 million people in about three weeks. While the numbers and the response seem to be in favor of Google+, two executives that are in charge of Google+, Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz commented that, “We’re Google. We can get anybody to kick the tires of a product…It doesn’t mean it’s going to be successful…”

The sentiment is shared upon as experts also agree that it’s too early to decide. Michael Fauscette, an analyst with IDC, commented, “Until it really starts to go mainstream, and I see my cousin in Florida decide to get on it, I just don’t think we can say it’s a success. We’ve got a ways to go.”

While I do agree that Google+ still has a long way to be titled a hit in the social networking field, it definitely has some, if not a lot, of potential that can be explored in the future. In the mean time, enjoy Facebook’s Zuckerberg’s thoughts on Google+ as shared by Mashable.com.

 

Like in Every Relationship… You Gotta’ Give a Little…

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You’ve probably heard it many, many times: the importance of keeping up the relationship with your Facebook fans. Since Facebook is a social media whose effectiveness relies crucially on developing relationships, engaging the fans of your business page is a given. Easier said than done, it’s not surprising that even though you’ve been advised on it many times, you still scratch your head every time you think about how the actual practice would pan out.

A few months back, Mashable.com published a post that originally from the American Express OPEN Forum, titled 4 Creative Ways to Reward Your Fans.

You guessed it, just like any other relationship, the act of giving rewards is highly beneficial in maintaining the relationship.

In the article, Blake Cahill, principal and president of social media agency Banyan Branch, commented on the issue, “Fans have signaled a level of passion or connection with a brand, so rewarding that acknowledgement only further endears the brand to those fans… Giving fans what they want can vary from discounts, to empowering them to support causes, to providing them with exclusive content and information. In many cases, success is a mix of all of these.”

There are four ways to treat your Facebook fans for their support and maintain the relationship:

  1. Offer exclusive discounts, coupons and contents
  2. Help fans give back
  3. Show you’re listening
  4. Recognize individual fans

In managing the image of your brand, the maintenance of your customer relationship would be supported as you follow a little of each advices.

 

Booqoos Launches Online Deal Marketplace

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A new company of interest launched in the competitive daily deals space last week. Called Booqoos, the Austin, Texas-based startup aims to offer a better way for merchants and consumers to manage online deals.

For merchants, Booqoos claims to provide a powerful platform with complete control and self-management of deals to suit individual business goals, and instant distribution through multiple channels. For consumers, Booqoos aggregates deals from other sites, as well its own, creating a one-stop shop with the ability to search by location, date and product/service category.

Booqoos’ do-it-yourself platform claims to be a smarter choice for local small and medium-sized businesses. Unlike other deal sites, Booqoos aims to be more than a discount solution for merchants: instead striving to be a full marketing platform that gives businesses unparalleled control over their deals.

With Booqoos, merchants have the power to:

•    Self-manage deals— Create deals with no minimum required discount, place caps on the number of deals available, plan deals up to a year in advance, and distribute them to consumers via email, social media and/or Booqoos.com all in one click

•    Feature multiple deals— Present multiple deals at once; package deals to upsell slow-moving items or excess inventory

•    Optimize scheduling— Set up traditional open-ended coupons or offer deals available only for specific, scheduled time slots to increase business during slower times

•    Avoid deep cuts into profit margins— Post a deal at half the cost of other deal sites and customize it to meet the business’ unique needs

“Booqoos is better for businesses, and better for buyers,” co-founder Tina Cannon says. “It gives merchants the flexibility to optimize deals to better suit their needs and gives shoppers an easy-to-use platform that cuts down on the clutter and confusion of countless deal emails.”

Source: Website Magazine

Well, hello there Google+

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“What? Another social networking site?”

No joke, that was exactly what I was thinking when I heard the news about Google+ a few weeks ago. While in truth, there are probably numbers of other social networking sites that have been popping in and out of the internet universe, few actually make it to be quite as big as, say Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

Only a few weeks ago, Google released a trailer announcing its new project called “The Google+ project”. From the trailer, Google described its project to have the ability present a different sharing experience to its users. The project is currently open through invitations only as it’s still in its beta stage. Nonetheless, I’m quite impressed. I wasn’t looking forward to completely shifting over to Google+ as I’m now comfortable with Facebook, but Google+ definitely well, has its plus.

A new feature that Google+ introduces that is different to Facebook is the option of categorizing people into “Circles”. While Facebook has its groups, Google+’s circles allow users more options in selecting the people you want the information to be shared with.

Another feature that Google+ has is the “Hangout” feature. Google+ describes “Hangout” to be a place where “the unplanned meet-up comes to the web for the first time”. Although face-to-face chat is a quite old idea, with “Hangout”, Google has integrated both social networking and face-to-face chat.

Overall, I’m not disappointed, though I can’t say I’m that impressed with Google+. Then again, the project is still in its trial status so who knows what other cool knick knacks are going to be added to Google+. I do feel that Google+ is much more personal and homey than Facebook, so it should be interesting to see how, or even if, Google+ can be utilized in the interests of marketing.

 

 

Quick Survival Guides to the Social Media World

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It’s not easy going through the jungle that is social media. Though it seems simple at first, everything is just constantly updated that just as you’re getting used to one social networking site, another hip and upcoming social networking site came up.

In the past, I’ve often given advices mostly on a specific type of social networking site. While nowadays, social networking sites are popping everywhere like daisies, these three points should be able to be applied in any type of social networking sites.

So, here my three quick guides to survive in the jungle of social media:

1. Timeliness is Relevance

The world of social media is scarily fast-paced. One day something is trending, next day it’s old news. If a company fails to update instantly, then other new stuff will pile up, covering the relevancy of the company’s message.

2. Focus on building relationship, not sales

People do not use social media (social networking) for the means of being marketed for. People use social networking to make relationships. So, don’t expect instant sales, instead focus on maintaining the company’s image to create loyal followers.

3. Not everything is about you

Social media is about a relationship between the consumer and the business. Just like any relationship, when one refuses to think about the other person’s needs, it fails. Therefore, when making posts or updates, make it through the consumer’s eyes. Is this information relevant to their needs in relation to the product/service the business offers?

 

Facebook To Overthrow Yahoo! in Display Ad-Selling

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Through the blog post that I wrote back in April, I expressed the growing development of Facebook Ads in the marketing world. So, I wasn’t all that surprise to see a headline from Mashable.com a few days ago that said, “Facebook To Take Number 1 Spot in Display Ad Market This Year [REPORT]”

Although much speculation had prophesized the success of Facebook in Advertising, the report seems to display that the prophecy is on its way to be fulfilled. The article by Todd Wasserman of Mashable.com was based on a research done by eMarketer. In the report, researchers predict that Facebook will grow its net US display revenues in 2011 by another 80.9% and reaching an estimate of $2.19 billion. With this growth, Facebook will be overthrowing Yahoo! as the country’s no.1 display ad-selling company.

David Hallerman, a principal analyst of eMarketer commented on the revelation, “Facebook’s supreme popularity—both in terms of numbers of people and amount of time they spend there—creates a plethora of display ad impressions, mainly for its unique form of banners…And that popularity is also boosting what advertisers will pay for its display ads.”

Aside from Facebook, eMarketer also report that Google is also showing a solid growth this year with double the revenues in display ad compared to 2010.

 

Hedge Fund Manager: Here’s 5 Reasons Why The U.S. Housing Market Is Going Down In 2012

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This article is not related to technology at all but I thought I want to share it anyway since this is related to our economy.

Alistair Lumsden, a portfolio manager of a $1.5 billion ABS fund at the $11 billion asset manager CQS, says the U.S. housing crisis is far from over.

Lumsden spoke at CQS’s client conference today, where he predicted that home sales would fall up to 10% in 2012.

To support his claim, he said:

  • 1 in 5 U.S. home sales is a forced transaction
  • You have 11 million or more units of distressed supply, and a limit on credit available
  • There is a significant amount of supply that will keep prices stable when they get there.
  • The large inventory of US homes expected to be offloaded by distressed sellers, coupled with constrained financing from US banks and agency lenders, means there are more problems to come in the housing market.
  • A lack of credit means about 30% of all US house purchases are all-cash transactions – “not a great signal” – and the US government has said it will try to withdraw the amount available through agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“What will be key,” he says, “will be existing home sales over the next two to three months, and how much distressed sales go up.”

“If we see an increase in distressed sales that will impact the level of home prices in the home price indices, and the indices are an important part of the psyche of the underlying economy.”

What’s looking better to him? According to Investment Week, he said that more opportunities are likely to arise in Europe, especially if Greece restructures its debt.

As far as his track record goes, CQS is an $11 billion fund managed by Michael Hintze, and at least some of CQS funds have had strong years recently. Lumsden’s fund was up 179% from June 2007 to June 2009, according to Investment Week. And in 2010 (through November), CQS was up 27.44% in its Directional Opportunities fund, 14.33% in its ABS Feeder Fund, 7.48% in its Conv & Quant Strats Feed Fund, and 12.47% in its Diversified Fund (managed by James Peattie).

Here’s more on Lumsden, from his profile on SPS Conferences, a conference he spoke at recently -

  • Chief Investment Officer of ABS and is responsible for devising and executing the Asset Backed Securities (ABS) strategies with a particular focus on investing in US MBS and Home Equity Loans (HEL).
  • Ran the Asset Management Desk within Rabobank‟s Vehicle Management Group
  • Was a founding member of the management team responsible for the launch of Rabobank‟s Tango structured investment vehicle, where he had primary responsibility for managing the $10 billion asset portfolio.
  • Was a Portfolio Manager at Abbey National Treasury Services where he invested in a variety of MBS and ABS securities, with primary responsibility for developing the bank‟s $15 billion HEL portfolio from 1995 to 2001.

For Small Businesses: Learning from the “Big” Guys

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A recent article by Erica Swallow in Mashable.com with the self-explanatory title, 6 New & Innovative Social Media Campaigns to Learn From, listed six companies’ social media campaign that the site found both innovative and new. Considering that we are a capitalistic-based economy, competition is what drives the market and because of that, any new or innovative advancement that a company makes, no matter how small, can be very crucial to the marketing strategy as a whole.

The article listed six companies and the innovative idea that the company embodied:

  1. Intel : Targeting a Digitally Savvy Audience
  2. The Century Council: Using YouTube Ads for a Good Cause
  3. Johnson’s Baby Canada: Offering Low-Value Prizes for High Return
  4. Ford Fiesta: Behind-the-Scenes Product Placement
  5. Samsung: Driving Engagement and Sharing
  6. Mello Yello: Relaunching with an Existing Fan Base

From this list, small businesses should definitely take note of what these companies in particular did to stand out from the market. While their strategy may not be able to apply the strategy in the same exact method, small companies should be able to take the idea behind it. From Intel, for example, small businesses can apply the direct target approach to its audience that Intel utilizes in the marketing campaign. In the case of the Century Council being applied to more general terms, small businesses can follow the similar method by advocating an issue that it’s closely related to, either by blog or by YouTube ads. The interpretation of the ideas can go on forever, but ultimately there’s always something to learn, especially from those who are advancing quickly in the social media marketing race.

For a longer explanation of the list in the original article, click here,

When in doubt, ask questions

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With all these crazy demands for companies to have a website, a Facebook page, a blog and a Twitter profile, I wasn’t exactly surprised when this non-profit organization that I recently volunteered in asked, “What is actually the difference?”

Especially in differing between Facebook and Twitter, questions like “Aren’t they basically the same old same old social network sites?” shouldn’t be a given a raised eye-brow as if it should be common sense, instead those question can be extremely effective in constructing a working marketing strategy.

With this post, I’ll try my best to give my two cents in why various use of social networking site is crucial in marketing. For one, each different medium provide different forum and reach to different markets. In crude words, they’re all different sides of marketing that in the end, should lead customer toward the same goal and that is for the company. While websites and blogs provide thorough detail about the company, it’s usually used by loyal customers and requires some sort of intention from the customer to check these media. Facebook and Twitter, on the other hand, is integrated within the customer’s daily life, thus having the ability to turn curious, potential customers to regular followers of the company. Twitter is especially effective because it’s also updated constantly.

Maybe some of your questions were answered, maybe not. My main point of this post is not exactly to answer all the questions in one post, yet I’d like to say it’s okay to ask questions. In fact, it’s highly crucial that companies ask questions to really dissect their vision and mission for the sake of an effective marketing strategy.

Nowadays, there are many resources that companies can use to really dissect the matter; there are consulting companies and positions have been opened for “Social Media” intern. When in doubt, ask questions.

Put Yourself in My Shoes!

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At the core of it, obviously the essence of public relations and marketing is one thing: building relationships. That’s why Facebook and Twitter are such effective and popular marketing tools.  Both Facebook and Twitter are able to break barriers between the company and the consumer. In other words, both are working to humanize the company’s image. Although relationships are obviously the center of PR and marketing, nowadays, it seems like most companies tend to focus on the quick sale rather than the slow, but sure process of PR and marketing.

Most companies and organizations are asking, “What can the customer give to us?” rather than “What we can bring to the customer?” By stating this, I don’t mean that profits aren’t important. Yes, profits are important, but building a well-received image and a solid target market are even more crucial in the long run. Therefore, one of the good tips so that marketers can tweak their strategies is to think of the brand in the customer’s perspective. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Would you as a customer accept the brand if it is being marketed this way?

Considering that relationship is the center of PR and marketing also means that it’s adopted many similar traits to that of day to day relationships. It requires maintenance and work. It’s ongoing and dynamic. How one communicates in a relationship also differs between the receivers of these relationships. When marketers and public relations people are able to see and treat the relationship between a company and its customers as similar to that of a personal relationship, the marketing strategies that are rooted on the idea may be far more effective in reaching the customers and maintaining contact.