My site is an Internet Marketing Advice Blog, I will be posting articles and info about how to be more successful with your internet marketing efforts.
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Your Official Presence On Facebook
Official Presence on Facebook – Opportunities and Pitfalls
The Internet, as a medium, has opened the doors to a wide range of communication possibilities with customers. The interactive characteristic of the medium also makes it possible for a customer to publish his response to a vast audience. Social networking sites, particularly Facebook, which is getting increasingly popular around the world, have given customers an equal opportunity to communicate as loudly as you about your brand, in a public forum open to the whole world.
On the brighter side, there is a great opportunity to acquire direct and unadulterated feedback from customers, without the need of expensive and time-consuming surveys and research processes. Directly redressing customer queries on the medium itself can help increase brand loyalty. However, as a brand owner, you need to realize the speed and potential of the medium to do good as well as harm.
Facebook Opportunity for Your Brand
There are enough reasons for a brand to be on one of the most happening mediums. A significant amount of conversation that happens on Facebook, or for that matter on other social platforms like Twitter, carries references to brands, with customer's attitude toward these clearly seen through them.
The fact is that whether you are there on Facebook, it is very likely that someone or the other from your customer base may be making a mention about you. Your brand presence during such a situation is important to either thank the customer for any accolades or gracefully respond and address any grievances posted by the customers and win back their confidence in your brand.
On a proactive note, sustained brand presence on Facebook also helps you create your own band of customers, including those interested in you. This gives you one point access to disburse any firsthand brand information in a single click, without spending a dime more.
Today, brands – both big and small – have a presence on Facebook. Some of them use it with more innovation than the rest.
Brand Pitfalls on Facebook
Traditional marketers are used to broadcast, which is an extremely formal means of communication, where customers voices are barely heard back. Coming from this background, many a time, marketers find it difficult to adjust and converse in the language demanded by social networking sites, which are much informal in nature.
There have been instances where brand owners trying to enforce rules and guidelines of discussion on Facebook fan pages have faced the immediate wrath of users, which had an adverse impact on the brand.
The lesson from this is very clear, the brand must try to avoid any pitfalls on Facebook; marketers must know the responsiveness and energy levels of the users and be one among them, rather than one above.
Word of Caution – World of opportunity in Facebook
For every scary story of a brand goof up on Facebook, there are many cases of success, where even small household brands have grown in popularity through effective use of the medium.
Two golden rules to be followed while using Facebook, which can yield good results in the long run, are as follows:
Do not be a big brother – be a cheerful friend to your customers. The big brother attitude, which worked fine in traditional media, can kill your brand on Facebook. Any showdown of brand arrogance or one-upmanship is given a bitter response by its customers in the same medium. For a brand to succeed, it has to be a friend, who is fun to speak with.
Do not advertise, converse – Blatant advertising, or use of social networks for incessant spamming with interruptive advertising, is a sure recipe for disaster. You will find your brand page getting isolated on Facebook.
There are many ethics to be followed on Facebook and social media, which can be easily grasped through active participation in the medium itself. A company must ensure that its trained representatives have marked presence on Facebook and social networking avenues as true online custodians for the brand. For many companies, it also makes sense to engage an agency that is experienced in handling brand reputations on Facebook and online avenues.
Get more information here for the best Facebook training available
Labels:
advertising,
ethics,
Facebook,
traffic
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Saturday, March 14, 2015
Face Your Customers On Facebook
Face Your Customers with Facebook
Communicating effectively with customers and delivering the right message to the right people has been one of the major challenges for any marketer since day one. Since early days of marketing, various forms of communication medium have been evolving with developments in technology as well as its consumers.
For a long time in the history of marketing communication, media remained the stronghold of newsmakers and advertisers and communication was mostly one way from the marketer to the reader. However, the trend of this inequality of voice was broken with the advent of the Internet and further developments within that medium itself.
Internet and Quantum Change in Media
The Internet brought about a sea change in the science and practice of mass communication and hence the process of marketing itself. But much before common users could take control of the content on the World Wide Web, the way we see it today, there was a time when content creation was the forte of those well-versed in HTML programming and web scripting languages. However, with the advent of services, such as blogs and social networking sites, the power of mass communication moved to the common user on the Internet.
Facebook – Front-Runner in Social Media Phenomenon
With 500 million users worldwide, and the numbers growing steeply, Facebook is emerging as one of the strongest mediums, with users getting totally involved in creating more and more content on the website. At any given point in time, millions of conversations take place, with precious customer-related information seeping through each of these, in the most natural way.
Customer Insight… Really
Even before the first television spot or a newspaper advertisement goes live, any company serious about its brand spends a great deal of effort and money on gathering information and insight into what their customers really want and how they seek to accomplish those needs. A lot of money is spent on brand research that delves into the awareness levels of the brand vis-a-vis competition.
This information can be readily accessed freely floating on a social networking platform, such as Facebook. All the answers that a brand may want to seek are hidden in the conversations happening through wall comments, photographs, tags, fan pages, and many such avenues through the same platform of Facebook.
All of this information is first hand, with honest responses.
Coming Face to Face With Customers
Users on Facebook form fan pages and groups pertaining to their interests and form conversations around topics and brands of their interests. Here are some tips with how a new age brand manager can keep a tab and also build his brand on Facebook.
Do a Brand search on Facebook – Conducting a search on Facebook with the terms related to your brand or that of your competition throws up results that include customers associating with the brand and various discussions, fan pages, where the brand features. Going through these conversations can reveal the opinion of the customers about your brand.
Creating a Fan page: If you are confident that your brand has the capability of attracting positive response and drawing fans, it is time you create a fan page for your brand and watch users “liking” the page and enroll for the same. The fan page can serve as an excellent platform to directly engage with customers and create a strong bond.
Create branded applications: Applications can range from entertaining games with your brand to useful tools related to your product.
The possibilities provided by Facebook to reach out to customers are endless, and all of this can be done at minimal cost with maximum impact. But while doing all of this as a marketer, you need to remember that the customer and you are on a level playing field, with both having equal opportunity to express. The customer is free to share his positive as well as negative experiences with your brand, which can influence other customers watching your brand carefully.
This is where you need dedicated efforts of professionals who understand the dynamics of the medium, which is very different from what conventional media marketers are generally used to. Facebook can hence help you come face to face with your customers. It becomes extremely important for you to know how this medium and conversations should be managed.
Get more information here for the best Facebook training available click here
Labels:
Facebook,
Internet,
social networking
Monday, March 2, 2015
Facebook Conversations
Facebook and Consumer Learning Process
A great deal of successful marketing today depends on closely understanding consumer behavior. As a marketer, you may always be curious to understand what excites or motivates your customers into buying either your products or those of your competitor. Depending on the buying and consumption cycle of your product, there can be several factors that will determine the sales conversion ratio for your product.
Toward Right Learning
A successful sale happens when your customer understands his need and is convinced that your product can satisfy that need in a reliable way. Both these steps happen through a process, which is known as learning. Hence as a marketer, your job begins by ensuring that the customer perceives his need and, more importantly, finds the solution in your product
Right Learning and Right Conversations
At this very moment, you may be reading this article on your laptop or desktop. Remember the day when you had decided to buy your first computer. You must have considered many factors before finalizing which computer to purchase. One of the important decision points for a buyer is his circle of reference. It is natural for you, as a buyer, to discuss with your informed friends about the best brand. Positive references from friends and acquaintances help one make a decision.
How has Facebook changed all of this?
Research has shown that buyers do a great deal of product research on the Internet and most of the time choose to purchase the product either online or offline. The power of the Internet as a research and information resource has been realized to a great extent by customers worldwide.
The basics of consumer behavior, learning, reference groups, and buying decisions have remained exactly the same. But what has changed significantly is the speed with which everything happens. Technology has brought down the barriers in global communication. Social networking sites, and more importantly the rising popularity of Facebook, bears a strong testimony to the growing power of the Internet as a mode of communication and a source of information.
Before and After Facebook
Like we discussed, most of the learning before the proliferation of Facebook and social media happened through advertisements on television. During the days of conventional media dominance, marketing was driven by the power to broadcast. Marketing communication was primarily unidirectional through blaring advertisements and press releases.
Word of mouth happened on a one-on-one basis, where the conversation would begin and end around a small group of people.
Today, a search on your favorite brand on Facebook may reveal many conversations about the brand, which may depict user’s positive or negative experiences with the brand. Unlike the clandestine brand gossip of earlier days, the Facebook era ensures that conversations are documented and made easily available through social networking sites.
Brands trying to ignore this new medium find themselves in a state similar to an ostrich, with its head buried in sand, thinking the world cannot see it. The real image of the brand in people’s minds shows up aloud these days through conversations on Facebook.
Facebook and Online Reputation
The power of Facebook, as discussed, has extended the scope of Word of Mouth beyond the good old conversation between friends. Today, each and every Facebook user is free to publish his views on your brand. The true effect of this happens whenever these conversations appear in searches and influence people’s opinion about the brand image.
This is where online reputation, primarily on a widely accepted medium like Facebook, matters.
In a nutshell..
Managing a positive image of your brand requires you to expand your reach, more than what you would do in case of conventional media. The conversational nature of social networking sites, such as Facebook, demands a different approach. Unlike one-time broadcast by the conventional medium, Facebook stores each and every conversation and makes it available through the search option for anyone who is curious to know more about your brand.
That is the reason why it is a critical part of any brand plan to feature positively on social networking sites, such as Facebook. Engaging consultants who have experience in managing brands through the new era of social networks is a growing practice that can help brands manage the new wave.
Get more information here for the best Facebook training available
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