1. Less will be more – most businesses will finally twig that you can’t be everywhere online and do it well without serious commitment of time (and therefore cash). Fewer sites, managed better, will mean enhanced return for most businesses, I promise. More sites, poorly managed due to time/commitment constraints say BAD things about your brand.

2. Finding a different social voice on each site – it’s critical to understand that what may work well on one site may not work on another. Each social networking site has a different tone and style, post frequency etc.. and what is posted on each site needs to respect that to have true reach and impact. If you are still duplicating content across multiple sites, that’s called noise, not added value.

3. Using different sites for different target markets – long gone will be the days where the same information gets churned out across all sites, businesses will realise that an enhance return for their efforts can be attained by breaking down their customer and stakeholder profiles into different categories and using different sites specifically for sections of their target audience, thereby making the objectives for each site much strong. The result: a stronger, more consistent message on each site.

4. Getting more mobile – without doubt the biggest growth area for 2012, so there is growing pressure on businesses to ensure their online presence is mobile friendly: smart phone friendly websites, apps, m-commerce, use of QR codes and augmented reality will become even more commonplace and an essential part of the marketing mix. Remember when people said websites were a fad and would never amount to much? (Sadly, I do!) That’s what a lot of people are saying about people buying goods and services via their mobile & tablets – its happening and it’s growing, fast. Microsoft predict that by 2014, we’ll be using our mobile phones more than our desktops – are you ready?

5. Getting nice(r) – as the brilliant Gary Vaynerchuk says, you need to be a part of the thank you economy to thrive online. You have to work harder than ever to get loyalty for your brand (offline and online), so starting thinking more proactive than reactive in terms of your customers. When was the last time you thanked them for their valued customers with no strings attached? Try it…. When was the last time you ran a competition as a thank you, again with no strings attached? Go on, amaze yourself…

These are just a flavour of the sea changes ahead for 2012 in the world of social media marketing, what would you add to the list?

Wishing all my readers a wonderful festive season and a big thank you for all your comments & support this year!

Jan

The post My top 5 Social Media 2012 predictions… appeared first on The Net Advantage.

Marmite are also now teaming up with Blippar to allow users to pull virtual information and recipes about the product from the product label – cute.

Is it exciting? Yes. Is it perfect? No. Why?

• You need to have an apple or android smartphone or tablet, blackberry and non-smartphones miss out.
• You need to have downloaded the Blippar app onto your phone or tablet.
• You need to know what Blippar is in the first place.
• You need to be bothered to want to access the ‘exclusive content’ – if they were giving me chance to win something amazing, maybe, but finding my nearest store or a free recipe – probably not going to swing it for me.
• A lot of the advertising was newspaper-based – I don’t read newspapers, I have my iPad.
• If you’re out and about the advertising needs to be located somewhere with wifi (if you don’t have 3G).
• It doesn’t have mass appeal … yet. Few people know about augmented reality and have a smartphone/tablet and know about blippar and have downloaded it and know to look out for it in adverts.

I think  a lot of thought needs to be put into using augmented reality as part of a marketing campaign. Whilst it’s potential is amazing, it still needs to be relevant, scalable, have interesting content and be widely accessible. Otherwise it’s just another costly marketing trick with minimal ROI.

What do you think, can augmented reality be a good marketing tool?

Posted by: Jan Minihane

The post Augmented Reality with your Marketing anyone? appeared first on The Net Advantage.

Have you wondered why you’re not getting much traction on your blog?

No-one’s signing up for future posts and you can’t get anyone to comment?

Blogging is a modern day diary, it gives you the opportunity to add your thoughts and opinions to any subject and to be read alongside experts on your chosen topic. Blogging for business is an excellent way of demonstrating what you do as you can write about case studies to show your expertise. Doing it well is somewhat of an art form.

This blog post will help you with the Title, Content and Look & Feel of your blog post:

Title

1. Short and snappy – make it easy for people to make a decision whether they want to read it.
2. Keywords – needs relevant keywords in it for SEO purposes (but don’t force it)
3. Attention grabbing – can come from a sentence within your blog post – what kind of title would make you click on a blog post?

Title examples – Twitter is dead in the water, 10 Top Tips to efficient energy use, Has retail shopping had its day? 5 guaranteed ways to boost your bottom line.

Content

1. Keep the language simple – write like a young teenager will be reading it (unless your target market are intellectuals!)
2. Make it a conversation, not a preaching session.
3. Lead paragraph – needs to be the attention grabbing bit, especially if the post is quite long, grab your readers attention with a summary of what they will read or pose some questions.
4. Calls to action – Ask questions, it make people think of an answer (and therefore more likely to leave comments) – especially leave the end of the blog on a question if possible.
5. Not too long – Overall length ideally 300 to 500 words max (forgive me, this one is longer, but worth it!).
6. Keyword rich – if you want a particular segment of your audience to read it, make sure you have those industry keywords in to make it easier for them to find you.
7. Sign off the post – e.g. ‘that’s all for now folks’, ‘next post coming soon’, ‘TTFN’– makes it more intimate and conversational than just finishing it with a sentence. Critical to sign off with your name when more than 1 person will be contribution to the blog as there will be different styles which could confuse readers.
8. Internal Links – Use links to other pages of your website. Link to other relevant blog posts or another relevant page, where do you want your reader to go?
9. External Links – Use links to external websites (and where relevant let that site know you have linked to them – they may help you promote your blog if you’ve given them a positive mention (but make it genuine!).
10. Add videos – (where available – media rich blog posts are more interesting to look at and it all helps from an SEO perspective).
11. Don’t sit on the fence – bland is boring in the blogging world, if you’re going to give your opinion on something, commit to it – you want to get a reaction (good or bad).
12. Write with passion – if you can’t get passionate about your product, service, industry, how on earth are you going to maintain readers’ attention?
13. Review your post – draft it in word, spell and grammar check it – nothing looks worse than a blog post with mistake in!
14. Get personal – if you are your brand, your blog is therefore partly about you, don’t be afraid to add your own experiences, you’ll often find the best response when you admit you got something wrong or are struggling with something.
15. Short & snappy – keep your sentences short to keep your readers attention.

Look and Feel

1. Use bold, italic, colour to break up the text and highlight the key points for skim readers
2. Use bullet points and numbering to break up text
3. Use sub headings every few paragraphs to make it easy to read
4. Use at least one image to add colour and interest to the page (and give credit for use)
5. Paragraphs should be no more than 4 or 5 lines long.

The Result?: Richer, more engaging, aesthetically pleasing and easy-to read blog posts!

This isn’t an exhaustive list (and don’t try to achieve all of them in 1 blog post!) – it would be great to get your top tips and thoughts in the comments below….

Posted by: Jan Minihane

The post 23 Top Tips for Successful Blog Posts appeared first on The Net Advantage.