Social Media and Advertising. Friends or Foes

Yesterday as sometimes happens, I found myself participating in not one but two separate business conferences, and interestingly I was asked virtually the same question came up at both events. Specifically if advertising was still valuable now that social media marketing was continuing to play such a powerful role?

It's a great question and the answer lies in the fact that social media is as we all know, about engagement and forming networks of like minded individuals with a common interest, passion, problem or need. Advertising on the other hand is all about mass marketing and getting your message out to a wide group.

The problem is this. Advertising works by increasing the level of awareness of you, your brand or business generically and reinforces the relationship you have with your market if you have one. If you don't, it reinforces that as well.

In other words it will be like a blank billboard with little value if the connection is not already there to support it.

This fact was made clear to me several years ago when I had just taken over as product manager of some major pharmaceutical brands and on doing a review of past spending, I found that my predecessor had been poring in a half a million dollars a year to a specific medical journal despite the fact that the product appeared to be receiving little or no benefit from it.

on doing a little research with a group of doctors, I found that they all agreed that if they were not using a product then just seeing ads of it in the magazine would have no effect. In short, no relationship equals no sale.

Interestingly when I cancelled the remainder of those ads, I was able to redirect those funds back into an innovative program designed to give the doctors exposure to using the medicine in a specific group of patients, as a basis for (wait for it) forming a relationship. Result millions of dollars increased revenue that year.

So yes advertising can and is still an effective option today, but needs to be properly applied when there is already an existing relationship, to remind people of that relationship.

Hope this sheds some light on this issue. Please let me know your thoughts a s well.
And until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.

Google Swoops On Motorola

It has now been announced that Google is in the process of buying mobile phone giant Motorola for an estimated US$12.5 billion.

In yet another example of a market leader understanding the diversified nature of modern day marketing, has purchased a key platform that will add to its existing strength in the areas of search engine marketing and mobile software, to add one of the most progressive and iconic brands in the mobile marketing world.

With the seemingly unstoppable rise in social media marketing, and allied to that the continual migration of social media usage going from traditional personal computer and laptop viewing, to now people engaging via their smart phones and now tablet devices, Google is acutely aware of the need to vertically integrate its product offering.

To highlight this, Facebook has recently announced that around one in three of its members routinely access Facebook via their mobile devices and these people are twice as active as those who don't. With over 750 million users currently, this means that over 250 million people are clearly voting on their preferred modality and it is clearly a trend that will continue into the future with experts predicting that more people will be using social media via mobile devices than computers by 2016.

All things considered, this may end up being on of the smartest purchases Google ever makes. What are your thoughts on it and who else do you think they should consider buying out?

Until next time, good luck and good marketing.


Daniele.

Twitter Now Allows Picture Sharing

After what seems to be years of Twitter users screaming for some form of photo sharing, is now available to all users, Twitter has now recently revealed its exciting new photo uploading function.

Originally made available in June this year, it now gives Twitter users the ability to add photos to any of their tweets.

To do so, you will see there is a camera symbol at the bottom of the “What’s Happening?” box on the Twitter site at www.twitter.com.

By simply clicking on the symbol, any user will now be able to nominate a picture to upload.

The tweets that do contain a picture will also have a link to: pic.twitter.com, as well as a thumbnail of the original picture.


Have you been using this feature at all. If so how.

Until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.

I Want to Blog Every Week, But Where Do I Get The Content?

I have often heard that people (as the importance of blogging) becomes increasing clear, say that they want to blog but are not sure where the ideas come from week in and week out.

This mindset presupposes that the blogger whether it be Chris Brogan or Fred Brown needs to do everything themselves. This is simply not the case. In most instances, the better known bloggers in every area occasionally beg, borrow and very (rarely) steal from other sources.

One classic example of this that is widely available to every blogger is the very under hyped resource of: Google Search Stories (GSS).

GSS provides copious amounts of video footage that can help augment the videos and content that you provide yourself.

It works the way Google always works. Namely by searching for content on a particular subject and then provides the best examples for you to peruse.


Let’s face it, some weeks the creative juices may not always be flowing. Writers are not machines and sometimes it's nice just to be able to get some other content of interest and sharing that with your network.

Here’s some food for thought. Good blogging is about providing good content consistently. N one ever said it always had to be your own.

What other sources do you know that provide quality content?

Until next time, good luck and good marketing.

Daniele.