Month: November 2014

Time flies. It’s almost the end of the term and I learn a lot from Comm464 class. Internet marketing is really the trend as it aligns with the way consumers make purchasing decisions. Besides, marketers need good resources to make good decisions and I am amazed by a variety of powerful online tools taught in the class. And to be quite frank, I am thankful for all those tactics learned in social media, which enable me to build a better online personal brand as well as relations with prospects through the efficient low-cost personalized communication.

These are lifelong skills that no matter what you are pursing in the future, e-marketing is an essential component for any business to proliferate product and build solid customer relations in the meanwhile. From the class, I know the importance of consistently acquiring updated skills of using advanced online marketing tools. Thus, I can design and woo customers in a better way without much time and investments on some costly offline campaigns.

What’s important, Internet as an arena is growing year by year as more numbers of users are buying products and services online than ever before. Challenges will lie ahead for us to have a differentiated online presentation to stay in the hunt of customer acquisition and retention. The best thing is that this course not only exposes us to some digital marketing strategies, but also trains us a habit to keep up with trend of ever fast-growing e-marketing, by regularly providing outside materials, conducting experiential as well as interactive learning environment, and encouraging commenting on news through Twitter and blog posts.

Today, it’s common knowledge that social media not work without great content. People have made the shift from thinking about how to get a good social media strategy to how to create an appealing content to drive good engagement on their social media channels.

So many of us post randomly, retweet without reading, and comment on things without such thought. Now it’s necessarily to think through and be sure to get your brand nailed down and plan the content, since more and more prospective employers now search on you before you even get a chance to meet him in person.

More or less, blog could potentially be the single biggest impact on driving your business or making you standout as it is the place where you are validated as an expert in the industry. Literally, you are creating your digital resume and making a good use of a content marketing calendar such as Hootsuite to prioritize blog posts will be helpful.

As far as I am concerned, to make our posts even more attracting, we could do something new like creating a video to draw the eye. Then insert it into our page or take the highlights linking back to the Youtube channel. Just like people spent more time watching a video than on Facebook itself, building some video that is worth sharing into your post will more likely drive 10 times more people’s attention.

All in all, we need to have an overall consistent plan before we start to build online profiles via different channels. It is worthwhile as well as essential nowadays to think through a good content design to drive an effective social media return on investment.

Picture from http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2014/11/5-steps-mind-map-content-increase-reach/

While all eyes were on the company in the months leading up to its initial public offerings in New York, China saw a wave of e-commerce startups that benefited from easy access to capital and the recognized growth market in its booming home country. The potential is so strong that Alibaba and its competitors could grow for years. However, the ever-fast growing e-commerce market is attracting more competition.

Alibaba’s growth is one reason for new competition. For small-business owners that sell on Taobao and Tmall, Alibaba’s main e-commerce sites, it is getting harder to compete for attention among a rapidly increasing number of active sellers. Sellers have to bid up the price of some of the marketing services to allow them stand out on the site. For buyers, the sites can appear overwhelming. Therefore, this would be a potential problem for Alibaba to optimize its content presentation for the site.

As Alibaba kept pushing sellers to offer discounts, life became harder for the sellers. As such big promotional events like Nov. 11 “Singles Day” that breaks sales records every year, sellers are getting pressured on prices. This may push some sellers to go off on their own or switch to a competitor that is trying to carve out a niche by specializing in one particular category. The reason behind is that while Alibaba provides a large range of variety that customers don’t need to go anywhere else for their needs to be fulfilled, affluent Chinese consumers don’t just want hypermarkets or a generalist. They now want boutiques that are authentic to give trustworthy recommendations. It is also a well-known fact that China has now been leading in terms of exporting low-cost manufactured goods and services which pushing down e-commerce sites’ listing prices, Alibaba should recognize that the west market and the business environment are very different from that of China. It is important to be aware of eBay’s failure in eastern market. Westerns are product-centric while Chinese markets are more customer-centric.

Picture from http://www.dw.de/what-makes-internet-giant-alibaba-so-successful/a-17910825

With the introduction of Apple Pay, the already competitive mobile payments landscape is being rewritten. While PayPal is the current leader, all are likely to feel the heat from the newcomers, especially Apple that Apple Pay allows you to use your iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, or Apple Watch as a digital wallet, paying at one of the 220,000 contactless payment locations across the US. Also by utilizing its Touch ID sensor, people could buy things with just a single tap, which is faster and more secure than entering a password.

Apple Pay benefits from Apple’s strong brand image and the company already has millions of consumers’ credit card information already on file. Hence, it is easier for Apple to expand the business. By and large, people like to work with their existing credit and debit cards, and are reluctant to switch over to other online pay services.

More importantly, the true account number is never shared with merchant and transactions made with Apple Pay do not transmit sensitive data, so even if transaction data is stolen it is useless for making fraudulent transactions. Apparently, Apple will win consumers’ trust eventually as the biggest concern to them when comes to electronic payments is security.

As we all know, people enjoy the convenience of tap-to-pay services, and Apple Pay is a possible reason to further secure consumers’ identities. No matter what you think of Apple Pay, you cannot deny the fact the company is a greater educator, leading the changes on how consumers view mobile payments.

Picture from http://www.howtogeek.com/201870/google-wallet-vs.-apple-pay-what-you-need-to-know/

News Article http://www.extremetech.com/computing/189661-apple-unveils-apple-pay-a-digital-wallet-for-your-iphone-6-and-apple-watch