Most people, including myself, are unaware how Twitter started. Nearly eight years ago Twitter was created to serve as an internal way of messaging for a podcasting company. Now it has become something much, much larger and, still, Twitter users aren't using it to the full potential it was originally intended for.
The whole idea of Twitter is to obtain as many retweets and followers as possible to get your message seen. The most effective way to do this is to tweet more than just text, using these four effective marketing techniques you can increase your followers by nearly 100%:
Add media
Use #hashtags
Use @mentions
Retweet
Twitter offers the ability to tweet video and sound, which most of the Twitter community neglects to take advantage of. Those who do include media in their tweets have three to four times more engagement and followers than those who simply tweet plain text.
Another way to increase your engagement is to use more hashtags and @mentions. Using these links your tweets to other pages and tweets and, therefore, increases your audience tremendously.
Combining these three easy techniques as well as retweeting tweets yourself is the best and most effective way to increase your Twitter audience, engagement, and your Twitter advantage.
Social media is ever-changing and growing, which is why it is so hard for companies to keep up and market themselves on the web. The most important tool with e-marketing is knowing who your audience is. Older generations are more apt to follow e-mail marketing, whereas younger generations and those beginning their careers now are prone to social media.
Dutch beer manufacturer, Heineken, definitely knows its audience. During a recent hiring wave, the company wanted to get its applicants, and company, to be innovative and unique. Heineken took the top three from nearly 2,000 applicants and put the final decision in the hands of social media. Unbeknown to the applicants, the company posted videos and blogs and set up a Twitter and Facebook account for "The Candidate" and allowed viewers to vote on who would be the next Heineken employee. Finally, to announce the winner, a YouTube video was played during halftime at a soccer game in Juventus Stadium in Turin, Italy which all three participants were attending.
Social media is the "art of listening, learning, and sharing" and Heineken is a perfect example of that. This campaign not only produced an exceptional new employee, it also created hundreds of new customers and followers of the company and its beer.
Check out "The Candidate" here and think of ways you can be innovative and stand out from the sea of "applicants", if you will, that are populating our lifestreams and micromedia.
Today's post is all about blogging! More
specifically, it will focus on blogs serving as marketing tools. Are you
ready for this?
Prior to enrolling in eMarketing and beginning this
blogging assignment, I held previous experience in the blogging world. I have
managed personal blogs on sites such as Blogger, Wordpress, Xanga and Tumblr,
to name a few. While running those blogs, I never imagined that I was marketing
myself, or marketing anything for that matter. I thought I was simply blogging
recreationally. But, now I realize that I was doing more than that. All of the pictures and
information I shared attached an image to my name, and people followed me based
on their interest in what I presented them with. So, I wasn’t blogging solely for
myself, I was also blogging to connect with others. And, in order to connect with others and gain a reader following I was marketing myself through the content I provided on my blog.
Now, I ask YOU to take a moment and think about your experiences
online. Are you a member of any blogging sites? Are you an active blog reader?
Next time you engage in any blogging activity, I challenge you to identify ways marketing is associated with the blog/blog’s content.
Below is a short list of some techniques from class
on successfully marketing a blog. I will continue to introduce more techniques
throughout my posts.
Blogging Techniques:
Know why you are blogging (What is the purpose of your blog? What message you want to deliver to your audience?)
Identify a target audience (...and identify why you want to reach that audience?)
Names are important (Think about how your name will show up in Google Search and Bing. Also, think about how easy that name is for people to remember.)
Quality of posts versus quantity of posts (A few good posts are better than a lot of bad posts!)
Choose an interesting topic for your posts
Before I say farewell, I want to introduce you to
one of my favorite blogs, Oh She Glows (http://ohsheglows.com/),
which is a healthy living blog ran by a woman named Angela. She began blogging
in 2008, and has become a blogging phenomenon
over the years. As a result of her success, she plans to publish her
first cookbook in 2014! It looks like she knows how to market herself! Let's get conversational; What are your favorite blogs and why?
When I was given the honorary title of “Multimedia Expert,”
the first thing that came to mind was, of course, YouTube. In case you reading
this blog post is the first time you have ever found yourself on the internet,
YouTube is a website that allows you to upload, share, and watch videos. Founded
in 2005, YouTube has grown exponentially in terms of users and content since
its inception. According to YouTube’s website:
Over 800 million unique users visit YouTube each
month.
Over 4 billion hours of video are watched each
month on YouTube
And 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube
every minute.
When many people think of YouTube they think of the
silly/hilarious home videos that permeate throughout YouTube and are
highlighted on shows such as Comedy Central’s Tosh.0 and MTV’s Ridiculousness.
While this is a big part of why YouTube has so many users, there are many
practical uses for YouTube as well, many of which are useful to businesses.
This past summer, I interned for the National Outdoor
Leadership School (NOLS). By working with them, I got to see first hand how a company
can utilize YouTube as a strategic business tool. Here are 3 ways in which NOLS
used this tool:
Marketing
NOLS, and many other companies, use upload videos on YouTube
as a form of marketing. A well crafted video advertisement can let potential
customers know what your selling, your mission, and create a sense of brand
awareness. Here is a NOLS video, which urges students to “Join Us” on a NOLS
course, persuading them through testimonials, great adventure footage, and a
catchy soundtrack.
Displaying Expertise
By posting informational videos, businesses can show that
they are leaders in their respective fields. For example, NOLS prides itself on
being a leader in the field of outdoor education. Each year they host a Faculty
Summit where all of their instructors come to their headquarters in Lander, WY
for a weekend long seminar on new issues and topics in the field of outdoor
education. This year they have uploaded videos of the presentations from the
summit. Here is a video they from the Summit of a forum they conducted on the
growing use of communication technologies in the wilderness classroom.
Customer Service
One common video used by companies is creating how-to videos
that teach the consumer how to use a product or service. Here is a video NOLS
posted on how to pack for warmth on one of their winter courses.
As you can see, there are many business opportunities to be
had through your use of YouTube. So next time you are watching a video about
talking cats, take a moment to see how businesses are using this astounding web
site.
YouTube as a Practical Business Tool
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Hi! I’m Kayla, a junior at PLU. I am a marketing major with a minor in math. I played basketball my first year here at PLU until I was injured and decided to take a different path and focus more on school and my career.
When I’m not working or being a student I like exploring the beautiful Pacific Northwest and spending time with my boyfriend, our roommates, and our crazy cat. I also enjoy the culinary arts and creating new and exciting recipes that are parallel my active lifestyle. If I had more free time I would spend it finding new areas to hike and explore. Eventually I would like to get started on my long bucket list and explore my hobby of outdoor recreation around the world.
With a degree in marketing and a love of outdoor rec., my dream job would be marketing and finding scholarship money and grants available for high schools students to go on the research and adventure trips with companies like REI, National Geographic, and the Discovery Channel Network. I always wanted to go on the trips when I was in high school, even college, to learn more about what different areas around the world had to offer, or where help was needed. The trips, however, are thousands of dollars for very short periods of time; therefore not many students, or people in general, have the funds to go.
My area of expertise for this blog lies in social and digital media marketing. Companies are vastly expanding into this area of marketing, after all this is where our world is heading, the new and ever evolving world of the Internet. We have sites like Facebook and LinkedIn to let people know who we are and what we do; then there are sites like FourSquare to tell people where we are. Companies have even installed facial recognition software that recognize when you walk into a store and automatically check you in these sites and many more.
It goes on and on and on, and just when you think you’re getting the hang of it something new and improved comes out. Companies who were huge in the 90s and even early in the new millennium are falling because they can’t keep up on promoting their business online. So, my job is to tell you a little bit about how companies are promoting their business online and what this whole ‘social media’ thing is even all about.
Not too bad for my first blog, now the rest will come a little easier – hopefully.
Here’s a completely unrelated, but super awesome video.
See you soon!!
Kayla Bostwick, Social Media Expert
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