Having worked with a small business who was  just starting out and had practically no web presence, I’d like to share some of the basic tips and tricks that I’ve identified for a new start-up

Importance of Google+ for small business
Having a Google+ account puts you on the map, literally. People may be under the impression that Google+ is dying out, and that nobody really uses it. That may be true, but Google the search engine isn’t, so if you want your local business to show up on the Google map, and have a preview page, definitely put claiming your business on Google

SEO
Effective keywords and meta description can get you a long way. Google even offers has its own Google Trends option that lets you in on the latest search term trend for you more choose the most relevant and popular keywords for your website. Get them on you website early, it doesn’t have to be the most effective keywords right off the bat, you can always optimize over time.

 Build Your Followers base early

Don’t be afraid to ask your regular customers to give you a like/follow on Facebook/Twitter, they’ve chosen your business for a reason. But be weary of who’s following you, they are so many content curators on the web whose sole purpose is to retweet with no specific target, any engagement you may be getting from these accounts probably won’t bring any value for you, instead, seek out influencers who will be of value to you.

Pay close attention to your reviews
As a new business, you may not have very many inbound links to your website, so the few that you do have will play a bigger role than you would like. The occasional bad review can have a much greater impact on your business than you would like. Make sure you acknowledge them, and get your loyal customers to go on those review sites and establish a strong presence that can take a few hits from the trolls and attention seekers.

 

Facebook is reportedly cracking down on the number of “overly promotional posts” in your newsfeed, and it doesn’t only apply to ads, but organic posts by brands as well. Personally, I’ve never had a problem with ads and promotional posts on Facebook. For the most part, Facebook’s algorithm has done a great job at keep every ad that’s showed up in my newsfeed relevant to my interests; and I could’ve easily mistaken them for something my friends had shared. But it seems that the great number of users disagree (enter Ello), and Facebook made the aforementioned annoucement citing feedback largely fueled by consumers’ displeasure with what they’re seeing on their Newsfeed.

So where does this leave the landscape of ads on Facebook? 1) We should expect a increase in paid advertisements, as this was undoubtedly Facebook’s true intention behind this shift – if you want to promote, you gotta pay for it; 2) an increasing prevalence of native advertising; and 3) an improvement in the quality of content posted by brands themselves.

While I’m definitely excited to see better quality content in my newsfeed, but I’m slightly weary of the popularity of native advertising.

Native advertising has had a long tradition in convention print media. It can take the form of advertorials, sponsored content, and those well placed ads that seem to have the perfect solution to that problem raised by a the article you’re reading. Websites like Mashable and Buzzfeed have long developed a tradition to work with brands to create content that seem to fill an audience need, but ultimately, the not-so-subtle goal is to bring our attention to the brand’s message. With, Facebook now featuring a list of trending topics to the right of our newsfeed, it’s likely that we’ll start to see more and more sponsored content. Your trusted sources of top trends, like VanityBuzz and Buzzfeed will start feeding us more and more sponsored articles and editorials. Like reports commissioned by lobby groups, we’ll have to be weary of the potential and inevitable bias we’ll find in these articles, and it can be often difficult to distinguish between a piece of sponsored content and a independent article. Facebook’s may have addressed the concerns for the over-promotion, but before we know it, it will resurface under various disguises.

Here’s John Oliver hilariously discussing the the potential danger of native advertising:

 

Having just watched this video, you may have thought that it was just another paid advertisement for the GoPro camera, but it is actually one of many thousands of user uploaded GoPro footage. Yes, it is earned media.

A quick scroll through the GoPro Youtube channel will display hundreds of  videos uploaded by the company showing people and even animals from all walks of life doing awesome things with their GoPro cameras – an impressive collection of GoPro’s owned media. But if you run a search for ‘GoPro’ on Youtube, what you’ll find is an even more impressive collection of GoPro’s earned media – viral videos uploaded by your (maybe-not-so) average owners of GoPro cameras.

GoPro is a tool used to creating content. The GoPro brand has become almost synonymous with the format of wide-angle point-of-view filming. Footage captured with a GoPro video are no just “caught on camera” but “CAUGHT ON GOPRO”. With that, every video filmed with a GoPro camera becomes the perfect advertisement for the the GoPro brand. Better yet, not only did GoPro not have to pay for most of these videos to be brought to the public, content creators had to pay GoPro for the cameras before they could create these GoPro videos. The brilliance of GoPro lies in the most meaningful piece of content that it owns: the wearable and mountable wide-angle style of filming. Every video filmed in this wide-angle has automatic association with the GoPro brand, every praise directed towards the content is a nod to tool that created it.

While GoPro does pay for its fair share of advertising on a variety of channels, it’s use of owned and paid of media is what transformed it from a wearable camera manufacturer to the public company it is today.

Sometimes, the simplest experience is the best experience. The cast of TV show Supernatural started the tradition of live tweeting with the audience during the show’s weekly airtime (provided they’re not filming future episodes during that time). Sometimes, they even invite other celebrities, like Williams Shatner and Orlando Jones who are fans of the show, to join in on the real-time discussion.

The idea of actor/director commentary isn’t new, voice over commentaries have long been a popular and stable feature in DVD boxsets for film and television. But back then, it’s either commentary or the dialogue, therefore there was no way to enjoy commentary and the show simultaneously. Now, with the use the Twitter, actors and directors can connect and interact with their loyal fans right from their smartphones, while the show proceeds at its usual pace on the bigger screen in front of them. For viewers, instead of mindlessly flipping through channels during the commercial break, they can now take to Twitter and ask their favourite cast members a question, and if they’re lucky, they might just get a response before the end of the commercial break. From the TV network’s perspective this can only improve the show’s rating, because viewers who choose to record the show for a later time will miss out on the opportunity to interact with their favourite cast members. For the brands that are involved, be it the TV show or the actors themselves, they are offering themselves up to converse with and give an inside scoop to thousands of high engaged fan/consumers. It also shows the viewers that the actors love what they do, and the fans have to an opportunity to show their appreciation  The digital age simply provides a more effective and direct way for the brands and consumers to connect on a more personal level and have a two-way conversation while enjoying the product that both sides have invested in.

Twitter has also tried to quantify the impact of live tweeting on viewer engagement:
Live-tweeting seems like a win-win for everybody involved, it’s a surprise that it hasn’t become a mandator practice in the industry.

Target had recently announced that they will be offering free shipping on every order this holiday season. To that I say – BULLSEYE for Target. (pun intended)

I’ve been a firm believer in the key ingredient to success to an E-Commerce platform is the shipping/courier service. E-Commerce offers shoppers the convenience of being able to shop for the things they want right from the comfort of their own homes, without having to go into the store. But there is only so much I am willing to pay for that convenience. I often find myself paying a visit to the brick and mortar store after having browsed for the products that I’m looking online, simply because the shipping fee was too hefty a price to pay. Sometimes, even with free shipping, the delivery of the product simply takes too long.

I had, in a previous blog post, attributed the success of Taobao to the extremely efficient shipping industry in China. Many Taobao vendors can afford to offer nation-wide free shipping for products that cost less than 10 RMB. Free shipping also doesn’t mean significantly slower delivery in China. It really is no surprise that Alibaba was able to generate $5.9 billion USD of revenue within 14 days of the launch of its Singles Day cyber, which is more than triple the total sales on Cyber Monday in the US. Consumers are comfortable shopping for these products online because they  know that they will be able to receive their purchases in a timely manner.

By now, I’m sure that you’ve seen this low-res of photo of #Alexfromtarget on your newsfeed

Alex was the overnight internet sensation who went viral for no apparent reason. It was a blurry picture of the teenage boy that blew up and generated over 600k followers for this Target employee. Shortly after the incident, the founder of digital marketing company Breakr – Dil-Domine Leonares decided to take credit for starting this “social media experiment” . This presumed PR move has generated a enormous amount of backlash, because quite simply, he tried to take credit for something that is much greater than the effort of one person or one firm of 7 employees.

Going viral is a collective effort, the greater the success the bigger the intricately connected web of people and factors that contributed to it. In Leonares’ Linkedin article, he summarized how he approached influencers and encouraged them to retweet the picture with the hashtag #Alexfrom marketing. The authenticity of his claims aside, influencers and hashtags are critical first steps in increasing the reach of a piece of content, but even then there is no guarantee that your content will be able to take off, nonetheless a piece of content with seemingly little unique appeals. Even if his claims were true, that he really did approach the company’s followers to jump on the #Alexfromtarget bandwagon, there is no way pinpoint exactly what made the picture of Alex spread like the way it did, as there have undoubtedly been countless attempts by individuals or organizations with far more followers than Breakr that have tried to promote their content with the same basic methods. Because ultimately, what Leonares described in his article are the most basic and fundamental steps to amplifying content, without any unique and innovative approach to the subject matter.

We, as consumers, are no strangers to video ads – for decades we’ve seen TV ads presented to us during designated commercial breaks; and in the last decade, we’ve seen a growing prevalence of ads being displayed as a precursor to of video content we’ve chosen to consume. So why are we so appalled by the idea of video ads on their Facebook and Instagram newsfeed?

The most important reason for our apparent disdain for video ads lies in the way they’ll be delivered to us on social platforms. On both Facebook and Instagram, videos ads will be presented in the same way that Facebook/Instagram posts from other users appear on our newsfeed. With the recent backlash for Facebook’s autoplay function, which has been blamed for hiking up people’s phone bills.

In fact, almost every form of video we’ve been introduced to so far have been presented in an autoplay format, just think TV and Youtube, while there’s always the option to skip the third party content, they do play themselves without our explicit instruction to do so, but the thing is, we know when to expect them. But now ads will pop up in places and at times that are impossible to anticipate, and chances are, if you haven’t changed your setting, the tape will start rolling before you realize.

For all the above reasons, advertisers are faced with new challenges when delivering video ads to social platforms like Facebook and Instagram. In order to capture the attention of social media users who may or may not have disabled ‘autoplay’, the video’s thumbnail and any single moment of the must offer an attractive reason for users to stop scrolling for moment and watch a video in its entirety, all the while making sure that the ad adhere to type of content that is shared on a particular user’s newsfeed on a particular platform. Instagram had promised to “ensure that they contain mostly fresh content, fit the vibe of the platform and are not simply repurposed TV/Web commercials”, because they, too, realize that without it, it will be nearly impossible to persuade users to voluntarily (for some, at the cost of their data usage) consume advertisement.

Social media is a great platform for brands to connect with and reach out to customers. Many businesses take to social media to monitor and gather information about consumers that may not be otherwise directly available to them. But why wait the shadows and listen, when you can start these conversations proactively?

Vancouver outdoor gear brand Arc’teryx has recently executed a swift and effective plan to gather feedback from consumers.

It’s clear that the purpose of this post is to elicit consumer preferences when it comes to wheeled luggages – a product that is currently not in Arc’teryx’s line-up, though not far out of the ball park. Consumers are incentivized to complete this survey by being “entered to win” a $300 jacket. It’s save to assume that people who have liked the Arc’teryx Facebook page all have some level of desire to own at least one Arc’teryx product, and the opportunity to win one at the expense of the few minutes it takes to answer a simple questionnaire is just too good to pass on. Furthermore, by posting the questions on Facebook, this act to reach out to customers seems far more personally than sending out an email or on a piece of paper, because Facebook is where many of us go to converse and catch up with friends and family.

Now let’s take a look at the response:

more than 500 likes and 443 direct responses to the questionnaires. Almost all the responses are detailed and relevant to Arc’teryx’s product development. This post went live at around 3pm on October 8th, which is most likely when the product design team was about to wrap up a day’s work. By the time they reconvened the next morning, they already had all the responses needed to proceed with the newly gathered intel. Arc’teryx was able to reach out to and elicit valuable responses from its target audience as they began to head home from work or sitting at home scrolling through their newsfeed, without wasting any valuable time of their own, all at the cost of only one less jacket from their warehouse. In the process, they made it known to hundreds of customers, as well as their friends, that Arc’teryx was in the process of developing a wheeled luggage, and that they should keep an eye out for the product that the consumers themselves had input in. This is a great example of leveraging owned media to generate earned. But having 38 selfless evangelists who shared the post despite diminishing their own chances at winning the jacket didn’t hurt either.

 

Over the past week, social media has been buzzing about #bendgate, which started when reports surfaced suggesting that the new iPhone 6 Plus bends after long hours in the user’s tight pant pocket. Competitors and spectators saw this opportunity and took to their own Twitter accounts to voice their own opinion on this controversy, some in the form of mockery, while others were a little more…constructive. In this day and age, social media offers people and brands the opportunity to join in on the conversation whenever something “big” happens, but how do they reap the most benefits from a conversation like this?

Let’s start by looking at what Apple’s biggest competitor Samsung, had to say about #bendgate:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This simple tweet easily generated over 10,000 retweet and 6,415 favourites.

Similarly, LG USA, another smartphone giant, also tweeted its own jab at the bending iPhone, and the tweet was retweeted over 9000 times and favourite just under 4,600 times:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, some of our favourite snack brands also not-so-steathily snuck in their own #bendgate tweet. The most important to note, is the tweet from KitKat:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This simple picture from a brand that isn’t even remotely connected to the smartphone industry generated an astonishing 28,000+ retweets and was favourited over 13,000 thousand times. If this were a popularity contest, KitKat would be the overwhelming winner.

But how did a snack brand with a much smaller dedicated fanbase (130k followers compared to Samsung’s 9 million+) than Apple’s top competitors achieve this with such a simple tweet? The answer is hashtags. KitKat utilized #bendgate and #iPhone6plus which are the constant centres of discussion in this new controversy, and people are on social media are constantly on the lookout for these keywords. Samsung on the other hand, pokes fun at the issue without directly inserting itself into the discussion with the relevant hashtag, thus limiting its exposure to everyone who is monitoring the #bendgate conversations. Even LG, with its 131K followers, also achieved similar numbers to Samsung with the use of the hashtag. Furthermore, both KitKat and LG used this opportunity to reiterate the unique selling points of their respective products, reinforcing aspects of their products that differentiates them from competitors and are loved by consumers. While Samsung focuses more of its efforts on simply mocking Apple, without referencing any specific strength of its own.

Although retweets and favourites don’t necessarily translate to tangible strategic benefits, they are definitely a step in the right direction. In this case, KitKat was able to effectively capitalize on Apple’s misfortune by placing itself in the centre of the conversation.

The Alibaba (NYSE: BABA) IPO has caused quite a the buzz in North America in recent months. But despite being the largest IPO in the U.S. market to-date, many people in North America are still wondering what it is that the company does so well.

Alibaba has 3 major E-commerce platforms that generate hundreds millions of visits per day. Of the three, Taobao(C2C) and tTmall(B2C)generate the bulk of the revenue for the Chinese E-commerce titan. Taobao, is connected to its B2C counterpart Tmall, as a relevant search query on platform will bring up results comprising of products and stores from both platforms. Customers used the same account to cumulate credibility and rewards across both platforms. In fact, writing meaningful reviews for vendors and brand names stores not only adds to one’s credibility, some vendors even offer rebates in exchange of timely reviews. Customers can also gather reward points through simply logging on everyday to “claim” their daily reward. Alibaba has created a highly-engaged community of vendors and consumers at virtually no extra cost to either party, so much so that countless international brands have opted to sell their products through Tmall, as opposed to developing their own E-commerce platform for the Chinese market. The success of its e-commerce platforms has not only allowed the company to create its own Paypal-like escrow payment system, it has also spilled over to fuel the development of the most efficient shipping network in the world.

While many traditional online vendors struggled with the wide adoption of smartphones, Alibaba embraced the challenged and offered even more to its customers. The Taobao mobile app, which is serves both Taobao and Tmall, offers a brilliantly designed user interfacethat includes every feature that is available on the web version,
including favouite vendors and products, reward redemption, convenient and secure payment, a live chat that allows vendors and customers to communicate in real time, and much more. Every additional feature is nicely tucked away to allow users to focus on the massive catalog, and easily accessible with the swipe of a finger. Mobile Taobao has connected people in remote, rural villages to the rich and glamorous inhabitants of the urban jungle through its convenient marketplace, giving people access to markets that would otherwise be unreachable. Founder Jack Ma has repeatedly stated that the company’s top priority is its customers. This video was released in the weeks leading up to the much anticipated IPO to give the public a glimpse of what Alibaba’s has accomplished: