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Facebook just released their new widget named “Say thanks” where you can create personalized videos for your friends on Facebook.

Facebook connects millions of people across the globe and previously they launched a widget where you could see a flashback of your timeline and some of the most popular things you posted in a video called “Your Facebook life in 62 seconds”. Moreover, they also have widgets such as “See friendship” where you can browse through a friend’s profile and see how much you have interacted with them through out and all the pictures associated with the two of you.

This type of thing captures millions of people’s hearts because of the customized effect per user. It is such a popular platform but people can still manage to frame some of their most memorable experiences and share it with the world without any effort.

Over the past few weeks we have learned about different platforms, customizable user experience, speed and other factors and this Facebook example just is a beautiful combination of all of those things related to creating and encouraging shareability, interaction and engagement from users all over the world.

Your Facebook life in 62 seconds
Introducing Say Thanks

Brand is not just representative of a business. A brand also means a person. More emphasis should be given these days on Personal Branding, since how you represent yourself is how you represent your business in many ways.

As Shama in the article below states: 7 ways you can create an awesome Personal Brand:

1. Start thinking of yourself as a brand
2. Audit your online presence
3. Secure a personal website
4. Produce value
5. Be purposeful
6. Create strong associations
7. Reinvent

Keeping your online presence up to date and also professional is extremely important. Whether you are applying for a job or are part  of a reputable organization, you have to play the part. Keeping track of your social media platforms and LinkedIn account, and posting atleast 2-3 times a week on each of those platforms providing valuable content is the way to go to create a pleasant image for yourself online!

Although as a student it might not be as important to start your own paid website if your not into it, a blog could be a perfect substitute for it. This would be the space where you can express your opinions and communicate with the world. This impacts your image greatly as often employers are keen to know what you are interested in, how you write and how actively you participate in online forums or your blog discussions.

Whether it be Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn groups etc, it matters what associations you draw to yourself. Associating yourself with the things that you are passionate about and issues you care about is another way to regurgitate yourself as a brand. Whether it be liking a Facebook Page, joining a LinkedIn group or following important people and companies you care about on Twitter is the way to go. This will also help you create purposeful and valuable content online.

Since, creativity can be learned through reading about ideas, and investing time in learning about other peoples’ experiences keep up to date with the latest news related to your field of interest. Lastly, keep evolving, whether its your skills, experiences or anything else run your life in alignment with the world clock that’s ticking. This is the cherry on top of the cake to make you an all rounder and stand out among others or at least associate, create or learn from your online presence as a brand.

7 Things you can do to build an awesome Personal Brand

With Facebook, Twitter and Instagram already on the high, Snapchat is the new thing. The generation these days is constantly looking for something new for themselves. e

It’s almost like they want to be unique and differentiate themselves from generation to generation. Somewhere, masses have caught on to Facebook and we notice parents, grandparents, kids every relationship you could imagine being on Facebook. Because youth these days are constantly evolving and like to keep things to themselves Snapchat is the new thing for them. The experience of “showing but not showing it all” is something that is appealing to the kids today.

Facebook being the market leader and buying Whatsapp and Instagram in the last 2-3 years has it all in their control. But with Snapchat being an individualistic in the market, starting small and growing rapidly is a proof that the “generation next” is waiting for the next big but new thing and embracing the digital changing with open arms.

Snapchat Turns 3

In the highly digitized world it is hard for businesses to strike a balance between using different channels of communication between the company and their consumers/masses.

As companies we want attention, and most often the good kind. It helps us create brand awareness, and thats why people spend so much money advertising. These days online advertising is the “new thing” and supposedly cheaper. But is it really reaching the kind of people you expect a response from?

This article explains the following:

“While the lion’s share of readers act in a similar way across platforms, there are some subtle peculiarities. Tablets, for example, generate more immediate visual attention, but print is said to conjure stronger levels of emotional intensity.

Neuro-Insight and Decode worked with News UK to discover that tablet ads in newspapers are seen for a shorter period of time than print because of their solus page status, but they tend to still deliver the same memory recall.

Using a mixture of qualitative research, exit questionnaires and a visual impact study, the three companies found that attention levels were not impacted by ad position, whether it was viewed on the right or left side of a page.”

Seems like that most people get attracted to interactive things. Whether its a flash ad. or an online ad. it seems more accessible to people on the go and is most likely to generate a click, hit or acknowledgement.

Having said that, if your audience is the kind to use traditional methods of communication, it is important to base your strategy off of that. Striking a balance is not necessary but staying relevant to your brand, audience and mission/vision is the key get noticed.

Print vs. Mobile Ads.

Personal brand is what we call something that represents our skills, personality and our ability to earn a status in society these days. Whether it’s a company or person we all hesitate to choose the things or people we get involved with.

Content Marketing is similar in that, you create quality that represents the performance of your organization on various levels. It is like the “first time impression” but not just first time, instead all the time. We constantly need to watch how we represent ourselves in the community/society/business setting and that really draws from our content. What information we post, share, like or tweet is what light people see us in. At some occasions we set bad examples and at some occasions good.

So, how do we set good examples? Some major things to account for are as follows:

Audience: Whether it’s social media, your website or any other resource, if you happen to send out content that is being directly or indirectly received by your target market then you want to know the people on your receiving end well enough. Their personality, purchase behavior, noting their likes and dislikes and customizing content for them is  the way to go to gain maximum reach. No kid wants to hear about wine and no adult wants to here about the next happy meal toy.

Organization: Not only is it important to bring out good content but it should also be done in a timely and strategic manner. You want to share valuable content by monitoring times where your target market is most active online. Also, you want to look into the length of the individual pieces taking into account the average attention span of your target audience. Last but not the least to keep yourselves organized prepare a month in advance as to all the content activity you are going to publish through your social media channels and assign leads to produce that material. This will help distinguish the pattern and dates of posting stuff, what to post, and pre distinguish the overall tone and voice of your messages.

Formulating your tactics in advance, understanding your people and creating a message that aligns with your brand will help your long term online campaign function smoothly.

3 Components of an Editorial Marketing Calendar

Often when we want to try a new thing, whether it’s a new restaurant, a new product, technology we always seek recommendations from our friends  and value opinions of those whom we find to be trustworthy and unbiased.

But, nowadays we don’t just seek help from our well wishers; we are hungry for knowledge. We are speedily moving towards finding people with common interests online who would give us justified and unbiased opinions and who have a level of expertise in using or dealing with a particular product or set of products. These people online who specialize in certain areas that they are passionate about use or familiarize themselves with the product to the extent that they can provide others with critical and constructive feedback. These people are  called the Influencers: people who influence others of their purchase decisions based on product reviews and opinions.

These group of people are very selective about what they post or endorse. Other people seek advice from these highly influential individuals to make a purchase decision in the market. Just like you would seek a financial advisor before making an investment these people are your “advisors”.

These people often express themselves in online forums and communities related to different fields such as technology, products, company services etc. If they like something they give positive feedback and dislike something they give negative feedback. We can not confuse them for a brand advocate in case they like something because brand advocates depict brand loyalty where as Influences only set standards of performance for evaluating a product.

Influencers drive demand through the online world extensively and these people continue to grow as new innovations continue to develop in different industries across the globe. Be careful about your product performance as these people can either drive demand high or low based on the appeal of your company and its’ products.

How the ‘new influencers’ are changing Online Marketing

We continue to grow and merge our realities with internet these days. Whether it’s the iPhone combined with the Nike app to help you stay fit, doing online banking through your smartphone, figuring out how many eggs remain in your tray at home, or using passcode from your smartphone to scan plu codes of coupons and other perks. We are always looking for alternatives to make our lives easier and faster.

Privacy always remains a major issue when talking about making anything and everything digitally interactive. It’s almost like we want the luxury without payment or sacrificing anything personal at all. “Consumer trust” (Shearman, Sarah 2014) is what companies seek when creating relationships and providing services.

“The availability of cheaper and smaller hardware means that everyday objects can become smart by inserting chips or sensors. Wearable tech is the first iteration of the Internet of Things to reach consumers and it is predicted the smart home will be the next battleground.” (Shearman, Sarah 2014) 

Seems like in spite of all the concerns we are still spearheading to create a world accessible with only a touch of few fingers. Companies and well known brands will have to seek consumer trust mainly through transparency so that people are aware of what they are getting themselves into. Every small connection should make a big difference.

http://www.prweek.com/article/1314363/trusted-brands-hold-key-success-internet-things

In this highly digitization world, every firm is competing to differentiate their brand and create unique customer experiences. Similar is the story of Jetstar Airways, where they decided to differentiate their brand and increase their level of service to existing and potential clients through interaction and consumer engagement.

With Hootsuite managing all of their social media platforms in one way, they were able to monitor their followers, their preferences as to what deals they indulge in, their travel stories and other customer queries.

Hootsuite made their job easier in the sense that they didn’t spend any time troubleshooting management problems or investing in experts to give tech. solutions but instead invested their time in creating and exchanging travel stories, initiating conversations, answering questions, accepting compliments and comments and providing high quality customer service all through one platform.

Online collaboration is so necessary these days to make your brand stick in your target’s mind. If a company has no online presence these days, even though it produces products worthy of your time it is highly unlikely that it will get any attention. With Hootsuite you can create an manage platforms as easy as scrolling your cursor and making a few clicks.

Encourage online engagement, improve online presence, and associate with people and brands that represent you and your company. This is the norm of the digital world today to be a successful business.

http://www.slideshare.net/hootsuite/case-study-jetstar

Coming from not using Twitter at all, to using twitter quite frequently through the course I am learning new things about hashtags, trending news and searching for people to follow etc.

Recently I discovered about the Twitter Stats Dashboard. This analytics tool was previously only available to advertisers and other selective users but now its accessible to all. What is does is, it makes your life easier to track. With the 140 characters limit, it’s hard to keep track of how effective your tweets are by monitoring manually. Now with this tool you can track who follows you, who retweets your messages, favorites you and even track your hashtag clicks. Not only this but it also gives you a month by month timeline as to how your messages are doing over time and helps distinguish any apparent patterns.

This tool helps you create an interactive approach to social media. It’s no longer just banging your head over the wall with no results but actually making the online experience a luxurious one.

The benefit is that you not only get to interact with people through your tweets, but get to know them on a personal level as to what they like, their response to your tweets, what do they like that you write is trending, how many people are following your tweets etc.

Twitter analytics indeed helps you create a two way channel of communication to create and maintain a healthy digital relationship.

So I came across this: Dove Ad. Makeover

There are so many creative things as part of this campaign with a strong clear message. The ad.makeover targets audiences with low self esteem to feel good about social media platform use. As you can see from the video above, this video lets target customers create positive messages for one another. These messages go viral through facebook in no time.

A simple positive thought is driven extensively by Facebook. Dove’s brand awareness and reinstating positive messages as part of a white themed soothing background captures the mind of the target audience. The “customize your ads.” factor drives many more to use the application on Facebook and customize their user experience.

This is something that sticks in people’s mind, spreads positivity and gives the user control over what they want to see on their side bar.

It’s a perfect mashup of positive brand experience tied in with the use of correct targeted audience, correct use of digital platform to launch their campaign and within the scope of the vision of Dove as an organization.