Egypt: What contributed more to the uprising, technology or the people?

This question can debated for a long time but since this is an E-Marketing blog, I will touch on the technology side of things. Egypt was considered the first “twitter revolution” or the “Facebook revolution.” The ability to connect with mass amounts of people to create a more organized uprising was not the soul factor creating the protest. It did however help generate a massive turnout and promote a positive message. The overall result of what happened here was positive, however social media can be very negative too.

Something that was not widely experienced while I was growing up is cyber bullying. This is a serious problem among today’s youth. Although on a much smaller scale than Egypt, a small social network is all kids have anyways. Hurtful messages or statuses can scar kids for life.

Also, the riots experienced after the Stanley Cup Finals in Vancouver in 2011 were fueled in some ways by social media with people posting about the riots even before the game started.

This shows e-marketers the sensitivity of online content on social media. Negative messages about a product or service can quickly spread and greatly hurt its image. On the positive side events can be easily planned and pull strategies can be successfully executed based on positive product or service attributes.

Looking back on life in 2011 there’s no doubt in my mind that I learned about Osama Bin Laden, Steve Jobs, and Amy Winehouse dying by status updates on facebook. Other major news stories that I followed were often prompted by facebook. Social media websites have proven to be very good ways to stay updated on the most popular current social media issues.

However, social media does have it’s pitfalls and can fall victim to a rumour mill that can cause a global tornado. The best example of this happened not less than one week ago. It was fueled by perfect timing and a perfect political situation. North Korea is one of the most media isolated nations in the world and a new, inexperienced leader was just thrust into power.

Rumours of Kim Jong-un’s death started last week on Weibo, the Chinese version of twitter. This rumour instantly went global sparking massive amounts of sharing on social media. No one has pinned down the initial source of this rumour but it infected the world through social media like nothing ever seen before. For such a huge piece of news to be started with a Weibo post and followed with written articles of all major news corporations shows a fundamental shift in the way news can be generated.

The idea of six degrees of separation is becoming a thing of the past. Social media is breaking down barriers between people, cultures, and regions.

The internet and social media has changed the marketing game completely. It’s becoming less common to use the push strategy of sending out endless flyers to households advertising. Now the most effective way to market is to use a pull strategy through E-Marketing, let consumers be brand advocates. Use different mediums to reach consumers that let them interact and talk about your brand. One of the most effective ways to do this is through social media.

So why are flyers not good for the environment? Well besides the fact that many end up in the landfill, we can also recycle them. Recycling is good right? …

Well recycling is better than creating more garbage but many people don’t realize that their paper recycling is shipped overseas to places like China or Indonesia. The carbon footprint from shipping mass amounts of paper from North America and Western Europe is obviously not a positive thing and this is not what you think of when you’re doing your part throwing your paper into the recycling.

I can honestly say that there are far less flyers coming in the mail than when I was growing up. This has a lot to do with the explosion of internet advertising and use of social media. The coupon business is growing online through email subscription sites such as Groupon. Groupon is using a pull strategy letting it’s users do the talking for it. This allows them to reach a far wider audience than traditional door flyers could ever hope to.

A further trend that’s happening is the use of smart phone technology to target consumers. Certain applications can message consumers when they’re in a certain area to alert them of a promotion at a close by store. This is eliminating the need to hire someone to pass out flyers that end up in the garbage anyways. Technology is quickly replacing the need for paper advertising. Now the only thing we need to worry about is recycling the computers and cell phones once they’re at the end of their life span.

I thought I would take a stab at writing about a bit of a touchy issue. While this is not a topic that would usually be discussed in school, I feel it’s important to discuss, especially in an e-marketing course.

A decade and a half ago before Facebook, My-space, twitter, and even Napster pornography reigned supreme on all page rankings and search engines. Today this has changed, now only four of the top 100 visited websites contains adult content. This is still a significant number and there’s no lack of creativity when it comes to advertising. Revenues are made mostly through subscription services and advertising on user generated content.

Pornography revenues are not necessarily ranked according to population. China topped the list in 2006 with more than $27 billion in pornography revenues. However, South Korea, only the 26th most populous nation on earth according to the U.S. Census Bureau, is next in line with more than $25 billion in pornography revenues.

Global Spending on Pornography:

70% of male internet users will visit a pornography website regularly. That’s a lot of traffic and a huge opportunity for marketers to make money. Are you getting a slice of the pornography pie? Ethics aside, there’s a lot of money to be made in this industry.

Yesterday was the biggest yearly television event in North America. Companies had to pay $3.5 million for 30 seconds of airtime and had to pay even more to say the word “Superbowl.” It was common to see companies just call it “the big game.” These TV advertisements tend to be some of the best drawing in many viewers who want to see just the adds and don’t care about the game at all.

What’s most important for companies is to generate follow through from viewers. This can be achieved simply by getting the viewer to search for the ad on youtube and view it again. Several ads have been up for only a day and already have several million hits. Companies now generate value not only from the TV Ad during the Superbowl, but also youtube before and after the game. There’s no better advertising than an ad going viral with people sharing it over social media platforms and email.