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.