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Lessons Your Business Should Learn From Christmas #1 Marketing Campaignby Andrew Redfern @ 23rd December 2009 10:37 am Social Media The US rock band’s victory over X Factor’s Joe McElderry in the Christmas number one battle demonstrated the power and influence of online social media; your marketing campaign could learn a lot from this. The recent internet campaign to get Rage Against the Machine to the Christmas number one in Britain has been described as a “protest against the X Factor monotony” and an attempt to break Simon Cowell’s stranglehold on the pop charts. What started out as a Facebook group rapidly became an online sensation, and eventually gathered enough support to successfully install the US rock band’s 1992 hit ‘Killing in The Name’ at the top of the Christmas charts ahead of X Factor winner Joe McElderry’s debut ‘The Climb’. The campaign, dubbed ‘Rage Against the X Factor’, shows just how influential online media, particularly social media, can be in spreading your message to the masses. There are countless lessons that can be learned from this story and applied to your business’s marketing strategy. First and foremost, it is important to make your content interesting; people won’t interact with boring, generic messages. Make sure your content is engaging, and different to what has been seen previously. You should also encourage your message to be passed onto the masses. Word of mouth is one of the most effective methods of distribution, so you should proactively ask users to champion your message to others. An example of a recent success for Hit Search is our work with Secure Trust Bank. As Hit Search Director Andrew Redfern explains: ‘We released a video of Secure Trust Bank’s Chief Executive discussing current events in the banking industry. This video was distributed online during the height of the financial crisis, and portrayed a positive outlook of Secure Trust Bank, showing that not all banks had been acting frivolously. ‘The video became a massive success, spreading the name of Secure Trust Bank throughout the online world.’ As well as the content, the timing of your social media campaign is absolutely crucial. Christmas can be somewhat of a slow news time for most, but Rage Against the X Factor began at just the right time for the story to gather momentum. Look at the big news stories of the day, are there any issues that are relevant to your campaign? A good marketing campaign can make use of a national news story to maximise its own coverage. Your campaign should be structured so that it is prepared for any unexpected developments within your business. For example, during Eurostar’s recent spell of cancellations and delays, its social media strategy changed from being an online marketing tool, to a method of providing updates to its customers on the escalating chaos. The power of social networking sites should not be underestimated when it comes to distributing your content. The Rage Against the X Factor campaign started life as a Facebook group, then spread rapidly around the web as it attracted more and more members. Before long the campaign had extended onto other networking sites such as Twitter, MySpace, and Bebo. The nature of these sites ensured that the campaign stretched not just across Britain, but right around the world. Utilising social media in this way can ensure maximum online exposure for your campaign. Lastly, it is important to remember that online mediums alone will not make for a successful campaign. The traditional press (newspapers, TV, radio, etc.) is just as important as the internet as a marketing medium, and is absolutely necessary if your campaign is to reach its full potential. Andrew Redfern says: ‘Social media is an extremely important aspect of any online marketing strategy. The campaign to get Rage Against the Machine to the Christmas number one spot is a perfect example of how social media can be utilised to distribute your message. A lot can be learned from this campaign about how to effectively promote your own business.’ Digg Offers New PPC & Advertising Modelby Andrew Redfern @ 12th August 2009 9:56 am Social Media On the 3rd of June Digg announced that in a couple of months, they will start a pilot advertising platform. This platform allowed users to bury or digg adverts that they found useful. The more an advert was buried, the more advertisers paid therefore if your advert was dug more, then the less you would pay. When the announcement was made, I was imagining it would be around October/November time before we would see it, just in time for Christmas. However, it looks that Digg have rolled it out a lot sooner than people had imagined. Ads have now started to appear within the “river” and I imagine there will be an awful lot of clicks on adverts that appear on the home page or on the other high volume pages. As a company, we believe this is a pioneering move by the social bookmarking site, as advertisers now have the opportunity to get really good feedback from actually internet users. Traditionally the only feedback we got was the number of clicks your advert achieved, but now we can see if someone likes what your advertising then they will digg it. As digg is a massive volume website, then you can use this information to see exactly how users interpret your ads, this information is then useful to use across any other adverts you use across the internet.
There currently doesn’t look to be a big relevancy insertion around, however I imagine this will come in the future. This does however, mean that are effectively bidding against digg users instead of other advertisers in order to have your content advertised cheaper. If you are having trouble with your PPC campaign or would like some extra PPC resource then call Hit Search on 0845 643 9289. Remember, its a big world out there, make sure you become visible. Top ten quick tips to improve your social media results – Do them today.by Andrew Redfern @ 17th July 2009 9:55 am Social Media 1. Blog (like crazy) Blog. Please. That’s the first priority. Set up a blog, a personal blog, a business blog. It’s easier than you think. Use an existing blogging site such as Blogger.com or GOingOn.com or install your own branded blogging site right on your own server by using WordPress. And, WordPress is free.2. Create Profiles (everywhere)
Create your profiles; do it now before someone else takes them. Once they are gone, they are gone forever. That’s called cyber squatting. So get out there. Use Open Social to make filling in your profiles as easy as a click of a button.3. Upload Photos (lots of them)
Upload photographs. You’ve got them. Don’t upload the one with you with a lampshade on your head…counterproductive; but other photographs? Absolutely. Customers want to see and participate. You want to give people a face to go with your company.4. Upload Videos (all you can find)
Videos. You all have got videos. I don’t care whether it’s training videos or customer videos, grab your video camera and go interview some of your customers. What’s better than seeing your customer’s smiley face on your Web site? And it doesn’t cost anything. 5. Podcast (often)
Podcast. If you’re too cheap to get a camera, use the free audio software that’s in your computer. That’s what I did..You can do that. It’s free. It just takes time. 6. Set Alerts (immediately)
Set alerts. People are talking about you. You probably need to know what they are saying and you want to participate.7. Comment (on a multitude of blogs)
Comment. Commenting is like going to a cocktail party. You wouldn’t walk into a networking event, walk up to a group of people talking, and tell them your name and what you do in your business. That would be rude and unacceptable. Listen first. Read the blogs and add comments. You can be controversial, that’s okay. But participate. Get involved.8. Get Connected (with everyone)
Get LinkedIn. Put it in your email that you have a LinkedIn account, you have a FaceBook account, and that you have a Twitter account. Make it a part of your heading on your letterhead, because that’s how you propagate. That’s how you sell it. 9. Explore Social Media (30 minutes per week)
Explore social media. Give me thirty minutes a week, that’s all I’m asking. Friday morning grab your coffee, lock yourself in your office, and give me thirty minutes. Just Google something. I promise you within the first 30 days you will be excited. You’ll be as excited as I am. You will get excited because of the ROI. 10. Be Creative (go create creatively)
And the most important commandment is creativity. That’s all. It’s just creativity and having fun. But you know what, that’s what your customers want. They want to see transparency. They want to see authenticity. They want to see you having fun. They want to be able to relate and communicate These are just a few hints on how to improve your involvement and eventual ROI from your social media activity,to find our more on how to incorporate social media into a fully integreated SEO campaign visit www.hitsearchlimited.com . Knowsley Safari School Busier Than Everby Andrew Redfern @ 22nd June 2009 3:35 pm Social Media Knowsley Safari Park’s Safari School is enjoying a very busy year with school bookings better than ever before. June has proved to be a popular month for school trips and July is fully booked until the last week of the month. With more schools opting for the parks excellent educational sessions as well as a trip around the safari drive our education team have been really busy preparing the lessons and teaching hundreds of children each week about animals around the world and how they live. Knowsley Safari Park’s Safari School offers a range of educational talks from Foundation Fun an introduction to the world of animals for the under 5’s, to undergraduate sessions about how the park works, captive breeding programs and animal welfare, so there really is something for everyone and all ages. The educational team also offer Outreach sessions where they will come to your school to talk to children about the lives of animals and bring Knowsley Safari Park to you so there is no need to worry about missing out if you can’t find a coach to bring your class to the park. Knowsley Safari Park offer superb entry rates for school trips and even better value on the educational talks. For more information please visit the safari school section of Knowsley Safari Park’s web site. Are you interesting in knowing more about Knowsley’s Social Campaign? Contact Hit Search, Search Engine Optimisation and Pay Per Click specialists, on 0845 643 9289. Remember, its a big world out there, make sure you become visible. Companies Who Have Embraced Social Media: Delta Airlinesby Andrew Redfern @ 17th June 2009 5:27 pm Social Media There is a growing understanding within the business community that Social Media can help to increase brand visibility and drive much needed extra visitors to a website. In our introduction to Social Media Series we will highlight successful brands that are embracing social media and using it in interesting ways to promote their brand. Let take our first example which is Delta airlines whose blog is one of the best in the airline industry; with daily updates on stories on upcoming ideas for the business as well as changes background to the people working in the business and their working lives. See the video below about the new Miami Delta Sky Club; an excellent opportunity to promote the benefits of its brand; in a wonderfully shot promotional video. Lessons to be learnt from Delta Airlines
All points to follow these rules and you are on the way to a good results back from your social media campaign. Would you like to know more about Social Media? If so, contact Hit Search, Search Engine Optimisation and Pay Per Click specialists, on 0845 643 9289. Remember, its a big world out there, make sure you become visible. StumbleUpon Launches URL Shortenerby Andrew Redfern @ 16th June 2009 5:36 pm Social Media StumbleUpon, the best way to discover new content on the Internet, launched a new service today. Designed specifically for publishers, Su.pr is the first URL shortener designed to help content creators grow their audience, while saving time and increasing brand exposure. Shortened URL services have increased in popularity over the past few months, yet none of them provide any real exposure benefits to the content publishers. Until Su.pr, the main reason to use a shortened URL was in order to fit a lot of information within a small character limit, i.e. Twitter’s 140 character maximum. Now, with Su.pr, publishers can drive traffic to their content and post across multiple platforms with a single click, all while preserving search ranking and branding. Su.pr is a free syndication tool for publishers that makes it possible for them to broadcast content across Facebook and Twitter, while also increasing the content’s exposure to StumbleUpon’s nearly 8 million users. All publishers have to do is type in their message, hit post, and the message is posted along with the shortened URL. Publishers can identify the best times to post, schedule future posts, and see real-time results on clicks, tweets, and traffic associated with posts. “Su.pr makes it faster and easier to syndicate and measure your content, helping publishers increase their reach and efficiency,” said Garrett Camp, StumbleUpon CEO. “And from every Su.pr link, users can discover other great content from that publisher.” Su.pr provides the following benefits: ** More traffic — Every Su.pr URL exposes content to StumbleUpon’s nearly 8 million users and allows publishers to showcase their site’s best content alongside each link. ** Better results in less time — Publishers can identify the optimal times to post (highest likely traffic) and schedule as many posts as they like, for whenever they want. ** One-click posting - With Su.pr, publishers can post to StumbleUpon, Twitter and Facebook with just one click. (More platforms to be added in the future). ** Real-time Analytics - Su.pr provides real-time reports on clicks and traffic, including the number of retweets for each post. ** Custom short URLs - Su.pr users have the option to have their own domain-name in the short URLs (i.e. mysite.com/a2b). ** Redirect friendly — Publishers can choose to create links that redirect traffic to their own site (301 redirect), preserving their search ranking. “Su.pr is one of a kind - in combination with StumbleUpon, it has increased traffic to my site, delivering as many as 24,000 unique visitors to a single post in less than 24 hours,” said Tim Ferriss, popular blogger and New York Times bestselling author of The 4-Hour Workweek. Ferriss added, “Su.pr isn’t another URL shortener.It produces measurable results, sending me more visitors in less time. From intelligent real-time analytics to my most important ‘retweeters’, it allows me to find what really works and ignore the noise. Want to know the best time to post? Done. Post to Twitter and Facebook with one click? Check. It’s one-stop shopping for those who want real ROI from social media.” “MTV is excited to have the opportunity to be one of the first organizations to utilize StumbleUpon’s Su.pr service,” said Damon Burrell, VP of Marketing, MTV. “We’re reaching our fans and viewers through a number of channels today, including Facebook and Twitter. As we extend our reach beyond MTV.com, it’s helpful to have something that does double duty - provide us with short, clean URLs, and offer us the analytics backend for us to accurately measure our efforts.” Would you like to know more about Online Marketing? If so, contact Hit Search, Search Engine Optimisation and Pay Per Click specialists, on 0845 643 9289. Remember, its a big world out there, make sure you become visible. Friendster Adds Fourth Social Networking Patentby Andrew Redfern @ 17th December 2008 12:25 pm Social Media Friendster, Inc., a top 20 global website based on traffic and the #1 social network in Asia, today announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded the social networking pioneer a new U.S. Patent, titled “Compatibility Scoring of Users in a Social Network” (U.S. Patent No. 7,451,161). Friendster has been granted four patents since July 2006, validating the company’s early and continuous innovation in online social networking. Friendster’s latest patent, granted on November 11, 2008, describes a unique methodology used to calculate compatibility based on expressed interests between users of a social network. This includes scoring the compatibility between two members of a social network based on their interests and scoring the correlation between two interests for a given member of a social network. “In just six years, social networking has become both an industry — since 8 of the top 20 largest websites in the world are social networks — and a critical platform for over half a billion Internet users globally to share, communicate, connect and be entertained with existing and new friends, family and colleagues,” said Richard Kimber, chief executive officer of Friendster. “A core component of the evolution of social networks is the ability of the online ’social graph’ to represent our real social life. Understanding the common interests between people establishes common ground to build and enhance relationships.” Prior to this most recent fourth patent, Friendster was granted three social networking patents in 2006 and 2007: – In July 2006, Friendster was awarded its first U.S. patent describing how people are connected in the context of an online social network, titled “A System, Method and Apparatus for Connecting Users in an Online Computer System Based on Their Relationships within Social Networks” (U.S. Patent No. 7,069,308). – Friendster was granted a second U.S. patent in October 2006, which discloses the process of enriching other users’ profiles with text, video, pictures and additional content, titled “Method of Inducing Content Uploads in a Social Network” (U.S. Patent No. 7,117,254). – In March 2007, Friendster added another patent to its portfolio, titled “System and Method for Managing Connections in an Online Social Network” (U.S. Patent No. 7,188,153 B2), which describes a technology that allows members of a social network to manage their connections by, for example, adding friends; personalizing their network through arranging, ordering and classifying connections made in an online community; and managing these connections at will. “Since launching the first social network in 2002, Friendster has continued to build and own a significant patent portfolio. Friendster’s four patents address many fundamentals of social networking — establishing connections, distributing and sharing content, managing connections over time and assessing compatibility between users. Friendster’s patent portfolio is one of several assets of the company. Friendster anticipates receiving more patents, and we will continue to focus on growing our large global business into an even larger one,” said Kimber. Friendster Leads in Asia and is a Top 20 Global Website Friendster is the #1 social network in Asia, with over 65 million registered users and over 50 million monthly unique visitors from Asia.* In Asia, Friendster has more monthly unique visitors than any other social network. Plus, Asia is the largest market of Internet users (Asia has 41% of the world’s Internet users while the U.S. has only 19%), and Asia is the fastest growing region in the world.** Friendster has a loyal and growing user base throughout Asia in the following top 10 countries for Friendster: Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and South Korea. Friendster is a top 20 global website in the world in terms of traffic, serving over 18 billion page views a month.** Friendster is 1st in “user engagement” among the top five global social networks, with users spending an average of 187 minutes per visitor per month on http://www.friendster.com.** Other Related Stories That May Be Of Interest:
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