Month: February 2011

Blog Use & Purpose Now
Blogs used to really popular for people who wanted to have an online diary, to express their thoughts on different things. However, the Pew Research Centre found that blogging has decreased by half from 2006 to 2009 among children ages 12 to 17. This is reasonable since blogging was first introduced before their age. In that age group, they are known to social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. However, even between the ages 18 to 33, which is the age group who experience the creation of blogs, blogging has also dropped 2 percent from 2008. The purpose of blogs have evolved in the past few years. Bloggers now have a general theme to their blogs, whether its technology related, beauty related or job related. A lot of bloggers have moved to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter because they find these sites more useful and they can reduce the time spent on it. As the society is improving, each person is busier with many responsibilities on their hands, writing blogs may not be as ideal anymore. Rather, when they feel they want to express a thought really quick, they can turn to sites like Facebook and Twitter. By doing so, others are updated with what they are doing quickly, rather than reading a really long blog.

Blog & Marketing
Blogs are now commonly found among companies as a marketing tool. Companies would write blogs to update and inform customers about their company. Many companies also ask their employees to write blogs to increase brand awareness and search engine optimization (To read more about Search engine optimization, please visit my earlier blog post).  For example, companies would have a blog post when they have a new collection in stock or when they have a huge sale going on.

Tumblr – A New Kind of Blog
With this evolution also foster the creation of sites like Tumblr. Instead of having paragraphs in a blog post, Tumblr’s blog posts are usually a picture or a video with a caption or thought below it. Below are some examples of Tumblr blogs.

Source: stfumarrieds.tumblr.com

Source: all-thats-interesting.tumblr.com

source: pbh3.tumblr.com

Who else is Blogging?
Although blogging is decreasing among teens and young adults, there is increasing use among adults ages 34-73. Bloggers among this age group are more educated and knowledgeable and therefore their blog posts are filled with more intellectual and informational content.

Online Marketing
Marketers have to understand their target audience first before determining which online (social media) channel to use. Although some companies may want to have presence in all the online channels, this is not ideal as it is time consuming and more costly. Each online channel requires human resources to maintain and monitor it. If the companies don’t research about which channel their target audience is using the most, they are wasting their resources and won’t get great results. So if the company’s target audience are adults between ages 34-73, then marketers should invest in producing more intellectual blog post content to attract them. On the other hand, if the company is targeting a younger audience, then they should focus on social media channels to increase their brand awareness.

Source: New York Times

Online Air Fares Platform
Searching for the lowest air fares online used to be quite difficult. The creation of central air fares selling platforms like Expedia.com and Orbitz.com help consumers ease that pain. These platforms allow users to compare air fares from different airlines as well as combine different airlines in a trip to get the cheapest price.

American Airlines’ Announcement
American Airlines recently announced that it wants to bypass these platforms and sell directly to consumers, so they have terminated their contracts with Expedia.com and Orbitz.com (Tickets are still available on other travel sites such as Priceline.com and Kayak.com). American Airlines’ justification for this announcement is that they will be able to lower their air fares because of disintermediation. Disintermediation is defined as removing the intermediaries in the “supply chain” or removing the “middleman”. Although this seems to benefit customers, American Airlines wouldn’t be able to offer online search comparison that made Expedia and Orbitz so successful.

Effect of Disintermediation
With disintermediation, airlines can monitor their customers better as well as offer discounts to attract customers. This will lead to a greater extend of brand loyalty. If airlines can eventually bypass these intermediaries, those who do not want to spend as much time comparing for the lowest air fares may fly with the airlines they trust the most, especially if airlines offer frequent flyer or loyalty programs. To ensure customers are getting what they care about the most, American Airlines claims that they have the lowest price guaranteed and customers can fill out a form if they find out another airline has a lower price. It’s hard to say if American Airlines actually has the lowest prices, but few customers would actually go that far to fill in a form to get $30-$50 price difference from American Airlines. On the other hand, airlines are trying to create value instead of competing for the lowest price. By value, I mean, providing excellent customer service and the seat’s comfortability, etc. I think this may work for travelers flying Business class who want a comfortable ride. However, for those who are in the economy class, they may not care about value as much as the price,  unless the airline has really bad customer service.

My Experience
I personally enjoy the convenience sites like Expedia.com and Orbitz.com offer and wouldn’t mind paying a small commission to them to receive this convenience. In the past, I would have to call my travel agent to ask for a quote during their operating hours and had to put up with their attitude. With these online platforms, I can find the lowest price on my own, at any time of the day. These sites are very useful for travelling and for airlines that have a smaller market share. Without these sites, consumers would directly go to the airline that first pop into their mind and they tend to be big airlines. With these sites, consumers are open to airlines that they are somewhat familiar with which they haven’t flown with yet. I really hope that American Airlines would lose in this fight and these sites can continue to give us the convenience we experience from them.

Source: New York Times

As a forth year student, graduation is fast approaching, so it’s time to find a job. Looking for a job is much more versatile than the past. Finding a job has transformed from the traditional classified in newspapers to fostering career management portals such as Monster.com and Workopolis.com.

Companies post their job vacancies via Monster.com or Workopolis.com to recruit more talent. Employers have a chance to market themselves describing the benefits they provide for their employees. These career websites allow job seekers to narrow searches to industries, position type, or location.

This leads to a new era of companies marketing themselves to recruit the best talents. In the past, job seekers were in the passive position because there wasn’t much choice or information for them to compare with. Job seekers also didn’t know a lot about the company’s culture and environment. They either depended on previous employees or assumed the culture from how the brand was marketed.

Many companies now have a sub-site on careers which provides a lot of information on the company, culture, as well as current openings. Some common characteristics found on companies’ career websites include testimonials and videos. Current employees’ testimonials are, of course, an easy way to convince job seekers to work for their company. There are videos about the workplace environment or employees’ experience.

Here are a few companies’ career website:

With online job search, it has opened up opportunities for job seekers to find jobs other than their local region. This in turn, increases the competitiveness of a job opening. On the other hand, many employers will compete to hire the best talent out there, even out of their local region.

It’s interesting to see how much resources companies are now allocating to market themselves not only for retail/ service purposes, but also for hiring purposes. I wonder what will be the next revolution for job searching.

Groupon’s success has everyone wanting a piece of the online coupons market.  Google wanted to purchase Groupon earlier, but the deal fell through. Now, Google is coming up with their own version of Groupon, Google offers. Google plans to use its wide network from Google places to connect with vendors and contract deals.

Here are a few pictures of what Google offers might look like:

Google will be able to target a broader range of companies because of the client base. Google offers will work pretty much the same way as Groupon. People will have a chance to buy a deal and once the target number of purchase is reached, the deal will open.

This is what you’ll see on the Google offers page.

It’s interesting to see that different organizations are trying to tap into this market. Facebook recently announced that they will be doing something similar with their Facebook check-in. It has proved that online coupons is certainly getting more popular and people are willing to spend more time looking for deals online.

Personally, I did buy a few of these online deals, but not all through Groupon. There are just so many sites out there now. Although Groupon still seems to be the leader or first mover in this market, eventually Groupon will need to do more to differentiate themselves from other online coupon sites such as Living Social, IndulgeLiving, etc. This also relates to my previous article about social sign-on. Some of these sites are already implementing social sign-on to ease the registration process of customers. In return, the purchase will be shown on Facebook as their recent activity or as a Tweet on Twitter. I suspect that other sites will soon follow because it will be quite difficult to keep up with all the different log-ins for all these sites.

Google has already tapped into many different markets. It has created Google buzz with the attempt to tap into the social network market but it hasn’t been very successful. We’ll see if Google offers will follow the trend of Google buzz or  if it will be a big hit.

Source: Mashable, Google Offers