10 August 2009

Advertising and Marketing Online Strategies "real-time"

Advertising and Marketing online strategy performance can be maximised by analyzing the latest race for social networking kudos

After reading about ‘Jacko Twitter Followers Bought For Cash' (Sky News Article - Michael Jackson) I was slightly shocked. Advertising within social network groups was always considered difficult because of the honest nature of linking between people. It was thought that gathering a group of trusted contacts together could only be spoilt by the obvious scourge of advertising during quality time. It would be like handing out business cards at a funeral! - Shockingly I have seen this happen…

Apparently more than 80 per cent of the largest US advertisers are using Facebook to promote themselves, suggesting that corporate America has embraced the social networking site as a mainstream promotional platform. (FT.com Article - Facebook)
 
LinkedIn also has the option to run advertisements across chosen campaign demographics, which leads me to wonder just how powerful social networks really are. I believe it’s easy to sell someone the idea of joining a group that could help further your standing, career, or generate more business, but in reality is it really happening – or are we being suckered into becoming an audience so that someone can sell on our details? Are the adverts running on social networking websites an admission of failure or a mark of success?
 
In my experience, inviting people you do business with but don't actually know very well leads to many unreturned requests to link up, whereas you will hook up with people that you are already chatty with over the phone straight away. So are we reinforcing relationships, and then participating as a consumer audience, rather than actually networking with new potential business associates? And is this good enough? If people use the sponsored links I suppose it simply doesn't matter. The only problem is if you have chosen to advertise your services on one site, but the audience moves on to the next social network gathering.

On this note Yahoo and Microsoft has teamed up to try and be a larger part of the traditional search market that Google dominates. Bing (Microsoft) is a good search facility but we do seem to be rushing for dominance on a global level, which can lead to local listings being lost. A good example of this is the realisation that relying on most keyword advertising models leads to a lack of local awareness. The local news services are losing their battle because of this, and I can't help but wonder if it’s possible to have a global search company which can offer the community services and business-to-business requirements of smaller communities or cities. We can't all be on the same street in London and now we are fighting for the same page on Google.

The most recent news, about Facebook purchasing the content-sharing service FriendFeed, looks to turn up the heat on Google by chasing the "real-time" search engine market, but even while writing this article, Google has sent out their new search sandbox area to test their latest "under the hood" changes to the usual Google search. The pace of change is often difficult to keep up with and can lead to a real concern about advertising ROI.
 
So, the Jackson family purchased twitter followers, but a recent article stated that 24% of tweets are automated. Is this like the old days when you would set your website counter to 300,000 visits to date, and by week four the tally would be 300,005?

Are we creating a buzz or unrealistic expectations?

If you would like a free consultation to chat about your current online startegy please don't hesitate to contact me using Linkedin or Google profile. The consultations are considered on a first come first serve basis.