Tips for CEO’s using social media

 

 

Recent studies in the field of public relations have shown that CEO’s and individuals holding key positions being active on business affiliated (as well as personal) social networks greatly improves information transmission both internally and publicly, and also creates a more open relationship between the business and its potential customer base.

 

It may not always be possible for a CEO to be constantly active on social networks to the extent that customers and followers might like –many people believe that the person holding the highest position should be the primary information source for any company –since the pressures of these high positions often overshadow the need for hourly or daily updates. 

 

However, any CEO who has familiarized themselves with social media will understand that it is not necessarily time consuming to post one or two updates or messages a day, even during a lunch or coffee break.

 

Creating a system where your company’s CEO has access to social networks, both personal and business-affiliated, will allow them to post whenever they want while your social development team works on the social networks for the rest of the time.

 

Successfully social CEO’s understand that posting one or two updates to Twitter or Facebook does not satisfy the extent of social media and online exposure. Having an extensive range of social network access as well as long-form blog updates and a central access website (as this is still arguably the first port of call to any business) will help promote social growth, exposure and accessibility.

 

Another recent trend on social networks that has expanded brand reach and interaction between brands and their customers is the ‘social takeover’, in which one member of staff or an associated company would take over a Twitter, Instagram or Vine account, showing fans how things happen behind the scenes, or provide an entertaining look at what happens in a regular day. Having a CEO do this will allow fans to see at least some of the effort that goes into making the company run smoothly.

 

 

Written by:  Wesley Geyer

Creative writer for ATKA SA

6 marketing revolutions in 2013

The digital media race is on. Some of the biggest companies in the world have spent the last few years honing their products in efforts to outsell their competitors, and as a result, the consumers have gotten much more than they could have asked for. Because of the developments in every area of communication, whether digital or analog, has drastically improved, and most significantly in the last 18 months. 

 

The following is a list of 6 of the most notable trends in marketing and communication that have been developed or more widely applied, or will become commonplace within the next cycle of product releases.

 

1. The digital wallet

 

 

Google has called it the Google Wallet; Apple uses Passbook. The idea behind the digital wallet is that we will no longer need to keep all kinds of identification, credit or debit cards, gift cards, plane tickets or loyalty cards with us at all times to get by. By simply syncing your smartphone with your bank account, adding the relevant application from Starbucks or participating airlines, this technology will allow you to pay for (almost) anything you buy by simply scanning or using the NFC (Near field communication) chip in your smartphone to communicate with purchase points, keeping every valuable card or access detail you need in one place so that you don’t have to worry about any of it. While this technology is still in development, it shows promise for the future.

 

 

2. The emergence of big data management

 

IBM studies have shown that 3 quintillion (that is 3 followed by 18 zeros) bytes of data are produced every day. As this number increases rapidly, we will need to find more effective ways of storing the data – more effective than hard drives and ordinary servers that we have traditionally used.

 

Cloud computing is a step in the right direction, giving us access to storage space without bulking up our offices or work spaces at arguably cheaper prices. This kind of storage is also more reliable over a longer period of time (when was the last time you spilt coffee on your iCloud account?), and gives us much more effective ways of reassessing the data we have. As time goes on, we will be able to use stored data to understand competitors, customer habits and the markets in a much shorter time than we have been able to before.

 

 

3. More intricate social media

 

Many companies have found social media as the most effective marketing technique due to its explosive growth, interactivity and instant feedback. However, some of the most notable uses of social media marketing will come in the form of something mores significant than ‘Likes’ on Facebook. Analytics, loyalty programs and transactional marketing have all become integral ways of promoting a company on Facebook Twitter and other notable social networks. However, there will come a point (and it has already shown signs of becoming more common) where new ‘Likes’ will be less important than interaction and actual results from social media.

 

 

4. Bigger mobile integration

 

Mobile web browsing has picked up a significant chunk of the total Internet browsing space in the last few years, with the introduction of tablets, smartphones and cheaper, faster data plans. As a result, companies have, and will continue to need to develop internal talent for app development, website integration with mobile platforms and looking at new ways of catering to the mobile market as people move away from the desktop browsing culture of the past.

 

 

5. Real time interaction and customer marketing

 

With location based services on mobile devices and GPS-enabled cellphones and computers becoming increasingly more accurate, marketing campaigns have begun focusing on allowing users to broadcast when they visit certain places to their friends. This lets the social media user to tell their friends where they are and what they are doing, and also gives the company they are visiting or buying from exposure for free. Come campaigns even allow users who ‘check-in’ at certain places enough times, or at certain times of the day to earn discounts or special prizes. Foursquare allows huge opportunities to companies wanting to get their locations trending on networks by enabling promotions and discount vouchers to be accessed directly from their mobile applications or website profiles.

 

 

6. Internal competition and directed marketing

 

Traditional marketing teams usually consist of a number of individuals working together on brainstorming projects, coming up with campaigns and promoting them to their targeted audiences. However, as markets become more fragmented and individual marketing becomes the norm, marketing teams are being broken down and changed into multi-faceted entities.

 

Many successful companies allow internal groups of employees to compete for funds with different ideas that would cater to a different market or would satisfy a different need within the company’s framework. These competing groups will then be pushed to create the best possible campaign in order to get their group chosen to lead the next strategy into fruition. Not only does this encourage critical thinking within a company, it also allows more focused market targeting based on smaller more specific socio-economic groups or individuals, and gives companies the opportunity to cover more ground more effectively.

 

 

Written by: Wesley Geyer

Creative writer for ATKA SA

How Google Cards makes the Internet more personal

 

Simply put, Google has been the leading Internet search engine for pretty much its entire life. 

 

It has become such an integral part of our lives that we now refer to the act of looking for a bit of information online as “Googling”. 

 

In recent years, there has been a lot of talk of innovation in the online world, from personalized search engines to adaptive results that learn your behavior and give you the results you are more likely to pick out first. Google has been at the forefront of all of these innovations.

 

In 2012, Google’s innovation struck a new level of personalization that went by pretty unnoticed at first, but through updates and additions, has become one of the major selling points that the company has to offer, both in the mobile and desktop search arenas.

 

Google Cards is a simplistic innovation by Google that has taken what Google does best – searching the Internet – and combined it with the idea that people now expect to be told what they want to know before they even ask. 

 

Imagine, for example, you are on your way to the airport, but you are stuck in traffic on the way there. You wouldn't have time to go to your airline’s website or to sit on hold for 20 minutes to find the status of your flight. If Google knows that you are supposed to be flying at a certain time on a certain day (through integration with Gmail) it can give you a little index card in your Google Search app on your smartphone (and all indications point to the Cards being available on Chrome in the near future too) showing you the details of your flight, the traffic level on the way to the airport, as well as any recommended routes, times and conditions relevant to your journey.

 

While Google Cards isn't going to show you information based on every single search you do, your regular search tendencies, favorite places, teams, websites, stocks, cities, etc., will all be used by Google to give you on-the-fly information without you even needing to ask for it. 

 

It may still be early days for this seemingly simple idea, but we may even be headed towards an Internet ecosystem that will allow us to pull up information based on our habits in other social areas as well.

 

Google has proven that it is not only comfortable with learning your search results, but through the use of location-based tracking, it will even be able to tell you (hopefully sometime in the near future) about the upcoming features at your most frequented theatre, or tell you if there is a table open at your favorite restaurant.

 

 

Written by: Wesley Geyer

Creative writer for ATKA SA

The Youth and Social Media

 

The youth (shall we say under 25), make up a large portion of active social media users are often the trend setters.

 

Where are the youth at the moment? What portion of social of the social media pie belongs to this segment and is there any marked trends in the movement of this group of people? Are they leaving Facebook? Where are they going?

 

 

Teens and Twitter

 

In Piper Jaffray’s 25th Semi-Annual teen research project, 30% of the 5000 teens interviewed named Twitter as their most important social network. The trends favour Twitter as it is keeps building its popularity. 

 

Compared to 2012, Twitter’s popularity has grown by 3% according to these votes, which are taken as a leading indicator of future trends. A recent poll amongst young Japanese social media users has showed that Twitter is their most popular social network by far, with many not even having tried Facebook. This is not surprising as Japan set a record with 25 088 tweets per second in 2011 during a television screening of a movie.

 

 

Facebook and the youth

 

86% of the 18 0 29 year old age group demographic is claimed by Facebook as the most popular social networking site. However, Facebook themselves have said that they have experienced reduced activity in favour of other products and services. 

 

The benefit of these other services is that they communicate more in SMS-style rather than being centred around status updates such as Facebook and Twitter. It seems that for teens, there are new social media options on a daily basis. Teens have recently shown increased interest in a few other social media platforms as a means of finding alternatives to Facebook. Let’s take a quick look at those.

 

The first is called Habbo Hotel and is a social networking site from Finland. It’s a game aimed at teens and kids to create a world in a hotel. The game starts by providing a user with a small room and an avatar which can be improved by earning points. The site has 25 million users.

 

The second alternative is quite familiar with most social media networkers. It’s a photo-sharing app called Instagram and has a wide variety of filters for use, causing its popularity with teens. The company was recently taken over by Facebook.

 

The third and last alternative we’ll look at today is called Tumblr and is also familiar to most. Half of this blogging site’s traffic is composed of users under the age of 25. It has 78 million blogs accessible on the site, with new ones starting everyday based on trends in memes or virtual sound bytes.

 

It seems like the only constant that one can be assured on when it comes to the youth and social media, is change. The youth feeds on change and are constantly looking for something more interesting or better than what is currently available. 

 

While this is not a bad thing, it simply means that there are no guarantees that today’s trendsetters will still be seen the same way tomorrow.

 

 

Written by Marleen Theunissen