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Social Media Case Study With Wizarding World Of Harry Potter Theme Park

Social media marketing is not really about wizards, but I do have an interesting story to tell you where wizards, and lots of other people, did benefit from this new way to market a business online.

The vice president of marketing at Universal Orlando Resorts had the responsibility of planning a marketing strategy to introduce the new Wizarding World of Harry Potter Theme Park there in Florida. She could have chosen any media form she desired, any marketing platform, with a potentially huge price tag attached.

What she chose to do was to tell 7 people about it. Thats right. She told the 7 most popular bloggers about it, and she told them on a secret midnight webcast that she ran. She invited those 7 bloggers and introduced them to the new theme park right on the webcast. Can you guess what happened next? No.. she didnt get fired!

What happened was that people talked about it. The 7 bloggers blogged about it right after the webcast. Lots of their followers blogged about it also, and talked about it with family and friends all over the world, and put it on all of their social sites where it would be spread by connections in those places. Main stream media follows those blogs and they wrote about it. Within 24 hours of telling 7 people, 350 million people heard about it. 350 MILLION people.

Initially, the vice president of marketing thought she might be fired given the reaction of her bosses who thought she should be doing television commercials, magazine advertisements, and telling the press. She wanted to tell 7 people and it turned out pretty well. This is a demonstration of earning attention getting people to talk about you, spread your ideas, tell your stories as opposed to buying attention (advertising) or begging (public relations).

Now you may be thinking, I dont have a business the size of Universal Orlando Resorts most of us dont. However, businesses of all sizes are using social media right now because that is where the people are! And if you think about it, people and attention is what we are all looking for when we market a business or service.

The traditional ways of marketing are buying and begging that we mentioned, along with bugging (sales). The new way to market is to earn attention to pull prospects and customers into your world instead of pushing out a message (advertise).

Right now there is a buzz about social media. You may be participating already, or you may be still considering how to plug in. At some point, most businesses national brands and local brands will need to participate. Yellow pages and newspapers are not where the majority of people are looking for business information anymore.

One of the main differences in social media marketing vs. traditional marketing is cost. The low price tag of social media means that any size business can engage in marketing their product using this new platform. Time is the key with social media. A small business can choose to learn how to market with social media and do all the work themselves, or even pay for some consulting work or a social media guide and then go to work.

Larger businesses hire someone in-house to be their social media manager, or outsource the work to a service that specializes in social media marketing. Either way, the key is having an active system in place because just as the example above demonstrates, once you start putting the word out about your business on a social website someone is bound to comment or engage with you. It really isnt social to ignore a response that you will get.

Questions will need answered, comments will need addressed, and simply participating in the conversation will grow the social presence of the business. Social media can become very viral quickly. If you incorporate real and creative marketing ideas and strategies that will educate, enlighten, or entertain your market, the same as you do with offline advertising, people will help you spread the word.

There really isnt magic needed to do social media marketing. The magic is what you will enjoy when you put forth the efforts, really engage with a community online and build an active website presence.

Mobile App Strategy for Your Business

The latest statistics indicate that internet users are slowly moving from PCs to Mobile devices like smart phones, tabs etc. for surfing and social media interactions. The reason for this shift is clear that mobiles can now fulfill their many needs. Internet speed on mobiles has increased which is significantly contributing to this trend. Studies have shown that on an average, people check their mobile phones over 150 times a day. There is every reason for a business to invest in a mobile application. If you are still not convinced about investing in mobile app development, read the post. You know your business objectives the best and therefore can best build a mobile application strategy around theses objectives. Customer engagement

One of the main advantages of mobile app is that you can engage your customers with it and that too in real time. If done correctly, it can open up a completely new stream for revenue generation. With mobile applications you can offer to your customers relevant information at the right time and location.

Customer Support

With mobile apps you can make the life of our customers simpler by providing them support when they are mobile and let them be in touch with you whenever they want.

Advertising and Promotion

Mobile application is certainly one of the best ways to advertise and promote new products and services. You can offer your customers location-based discount coupons and send them push notifications.

Customer feedback

One of the most difficult tasks related to customer relationship management is to collect customer feedbacks. With the help of mobile app you can easily do this and also it is easier for customers to be an active participant in the feedback process.

Customer Behavior

With the help of a mobile app, you can learn more about the customer profiles and their locations to tailor make special communication messages and offers for them.

E-commerce support

Especially when you are engaged in e-commerce business and sell products or services online, having a mobile app becomes quite necessary. To stay competitive with other players and to provide ease and mobility to your customers, you should invest in developing your application. Even if you are an eCommerce start-up, compromising on a mobile app could cost you more in terms of unrealized opportunities to grab customers.

Lastly, you should think of some creative ideas for developing a mobile app. In this competitive environment, it is important to stay different. Your aim should be to grab the attention of your existing customers, connect with the previous customers and bring new customers with attractive offers and great customer support at the right time and place.

Author info:

Steve Thomas is a freelance writer. His articles on topic like mobile app development guide are published on various online platforms.

Words That stir An Emotional Response

Words that provoke an Emotional Response – Marketing firms have an inside secret that aids them to create compelling content and advertisements. They know there are certain words in the English language that, when read, create an emotional response. The big names in marketing use those words every day to write compelling copy that increases the potential for higher sales volume.

Those words are words that create a specific positive thought, or pull on the emotional senses that each of us possess. They make certain suggestions that give us warm feelings about the products or services we review, and the security needed to trust the company involved. Those words also add a time constraint, another secret in marketing, which compel people to act before they “miss out” on something.

Absolutely accurate advantage aggressive already amazing approved attractive authentic bargain beautiful better big bonus celebrate challenge colourful colossal commanding complete confidential convenient crammed delivered dependable direct discount easily effective electrify enchanting endorsed enormous essential everlasting excellent exciting exclusive expand experienced expert exquisite extraordinary extravagant famous fantastic fascinating foolproof force foremost fortune full gallant genuine gift gigantic golden greatest guaranteed helpful highest honour huge hypnotise immaculate immediately impressive improved incredible indescribable informative inspect instructive interesting invincible largest latest lavishly liberal lifetime limited limitless lowest magic magnificent magnify mammoth matchless maximum miracle noble noted odd outperforms outstanding overpower personalised pioneer popular powerful practical preferred private professional profitable proven quality quickly radiant rare recommended reduced refundable reliable remarkable revealing revolutionary scarce scorecard seasoned secrets security selected sensational simplified sizable skilled solid sparkle special spirit startling stimulate strange strong sturdy substantial successful superior surprise tempting terrific tested timeless tremendous turbocharged ultimate unconditional unearth unique unlimited unparalleled unprecedented unsurpassed unusual urgent useful valuable wealth weird wonderful wondrous you.

Incorporating these lexis into your content will help generate the emotions needed to move potential customers from potential to customers. You need to inform your visitors while also giving them adequate reasons to act upon your information. By adding some of the words from above, you can add a time constraint to your offering that compels people to take advantage of it. Failure to add a time constraint can allow someone to bookmark your proposal and then forget about it. By adding a time constraint, you compel them to act now, not later. Why would you want to spend all that time in design to generate the emotions needed to compel a visitor to buy only to allow them to bookmark the site and forget about it? Implementing the psychologicla marketing strategies will set you well on your way to higher profits through heightened sales volume.
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I am a social media marketing professional and Managing Director of Panther Interactive Marketing a social media marketing agency http://www.socialmediastrategy.org.uk Panther was founded in 1994 & has clients across the UK, with a focus in the midlands – Nottingham, Derby, Leicester & London areas. Panther Interactive Marketing specialises in social media, social media marketing and social media networking as well as more traditional marketing methods. We help clients blend their social media into their overall marketing mix. Panther’s team help businesses grow in the UK and internationally with measurable ROI.

We offer social media courses and training to businesses from large multinationals to small home based businesses. We also have a wide range of packaged and bespoke social media services that we offer at very competitive rates.

We also run a UK focused Social media

Marketing

Web ‘monster job board’ which is packed with social media, marketing and digital marketing jobs http://www.marketingjobsuk.uk.com

Solutions To Discrimination And Stereotyping At Work

Typecasting and stereotyping individuals is a common human error. Constructive relationship building is reliant on a person’s ability to learn from others differences. Failing to notice diversity in the workplace and not approaching this with an open mind is a fundamental error we all make. It is important for employees to identify ways to remove stereotyping from their work environment.

While you may not be directly involved, if you are in an environment that is conducive to social labeling consider yourself warned. Stereotyping inhibits social development and group learning. Work typecasting will directly hamper an individual’s ability to develop personal relationships and networking skills.

Prejudice is an immediate by-product of social stereotyping. Prejudiced behaviour leads to discrimination in the workplace which is less than favourable. The labelling of people at work is a way in which we categorise chunks of information. The less familiar the information and the more complicated it is to disseminate, the more we are prone to assigning a ‘general’ label to it.

In an attempt to remove workplace stereotyping the best approach to start with is by defining this. Stereotyping or labeling is explained as being the social categorisation we assign to those we meet. It is a human instinct to literally label people as we meet them. In essence stereotyping is a ‘lazy’ social habit we have developed. Consider the disaster stereotyping has in a place such as South Africa, where the diversity in culture is vast and complex.

When human beings are faced with new information we look for the fastest and simplest way to make sense of it. When bombarded with vast differences and hordes of information the easiest way through is to put miscellaneous matter into a stereotype box. When faced with information we don’t understand a kind of mental meltdown ensues. Systems crash and the sheer mystery of such information lead to assumptions.

Prejudice as a Result of Stereotyping at Work

Prejudice behaviour and discrimination is a direct result of stereotyping. Discrimination is an immediate by-product of refusing to accept other for their individuality. Such behaviour is both deconstructive and primitive. As the name explains, to be prejudice is to pre-judge an individual. Instead of awarding people the equal opportunity to prove their personal worth we assign a predefined label to them. Based on assumption, we place individuals into groups of relevancy. Prejudice behaviour in the workplace instills negativity and unfair criticism.

FIVE SOLUTIONS: Remove Stereotyping form the Workplace

1. Learn to interact with people on a more personal level

– Personal relationships are one of the most insightful clues to your own emotional maturity.
– Expand your perceptions and open your mind to diversities.
– Personal relationships are based on your ability to interact with others and harmonise the disclosure of personal information

2. Interact with diverse professional contacts

– Open yourself up to learning about different cultures in business.
– Develop valuable business contacts as a result of mutual sharing and respect.

3. Commit to expanding your knowledge.

– Apply effort to you endeavour to learn from things you don’t understand.
– Exercise commitment and patience in your quest to remove stereotyping from the workplace.

4. Keep an open mind.

– Put your feet in others shoes.
– Consider their experiences based on their situation.
– Conceited behaviour is counter-productive.
– Practice humility

5. Make it your goal to remove type casting from your workplace.

– Display conviction to your cause and you will not fail.
– Setting objectives is the best way to motivate yourself.
– Make it your goal to succeed.

Learning from each other’s differences and having a slice of humble pie is all that is required to eliminate stereotyping. There are so many things that we can learn from each other’s differences. We cannot expect to move forward if we continue to refer back to past stereotyping.

Copyright (c) 2008 Camilla Patten

Make The Most Of Your Online Presence With Social Intelligence Applications

The buzzword today is social networking and social intelligence. With the internet boom, social commerce and social gaming offers a unique scope for enterprises to understand their user activities, demographic profiles and other trend behaviors.

Benefits of Social Intelligence Applications

In order to help enterprises make the most ofsocial intelligence, next generation service providers have come up with innovative social intelligence applications. These tools or solutions help to track information across multiple social platforms to keep a tab of customer behavior insights in the ever-fluctuating social media sphere. The aim of most social intelligence apps is to map the social commerce sphere in a broader perspective and attain valuable and real time customer insights. Some of the advantages are listed below:

Easy to get up and operating
Helps in estimating the effectiveness of acquisition campaigns and conducts funnel analysis on viral promotions and features
Helps to monitor virtual currency monetization and trend metrics such as ARPU, ARPPU, conversions, payment type and many others
Enables enterprises to understand trending metrics such as ARPPU (Average Revenue per Paying User) over the last 30 or 60 days, and drill-down by payment type such as Amazon, PayPal, Facebook Credits and the like
Helps product managers attainactionable insightsinto their most-used app features and on the factors that drive monetization to make quick and smart operating decisions
Assists marketers in creating user profiles in order to target and personalize app content to the most-engaged users, such as frequent visitors or frequent purchasers

Social Intelligence and Social Media Analytics

An essential aspect of social intelligence issocial media analyticsthat provides customers and end users with a comprehensive platform for estimating interactive marketing with the help of analyzing, integrating and enabling companies to enact on the intelligence attained by extending their reach, broadening retention and driving greater revenue.

The most sophisticatedsocial media analytics toolsoffer the following services and benefits:
Offers trending views and drill-down capabilities

Provides insights to make smart and quick operating decisions across huge amounts of social data
Leads to acquisition to revenue
Helps in attaining quicker insights into the key influences on the K-Factor and viral campaigns
Helps clients understand what keeps customers engaged, and what levers that can most affect revenues.
As the social media sphere is rapidly increasing with Twitter, Facebook and personal/corporate blogs, social media analytics tools can help users make the most of it.