And now the end is near…

As my second year is drawing to a close, I have come to the end of this Digital Communications Unit. I have learnt to love all things in relation to digital advertising and turned my frustrations at certain topics in to knowledge and understanding. So for what may be my final post, a reflection of what I’ve learnt, gained and understand, I’m going to go back to where it all began. For my final topic I will discuss and reflect on Digital Strategies, their history and context and where social media is heading in the future, and I may just through in a bit of brand application for fun.

Andrew McStay (2009, pg 11.) quotes that the ‘ever-evolving nature of digital media is quickly re-writing the rulebook of advertising and marketing.” This is something I strongly agree with and examples of digital media evolving can be seen through writings and examples in my previous blogs. Advances in technology are making anything seem possible, new technological innovations and our online habits are providing a variety of new promotional opportunities to bring products and brands to the publics attention.

Starting at the basics, digital media has moved on from fringe advertising, beyond pop-ups and now social media is the dominant global advertising media form. Having looked at ethical dilemmas regarding privacy and the use of cookies I have formed my own views.

It is important to understand that advertisers want to reach the greatest number of consumers for the least amount of money, and what better way than social media. Consumers are always looking for something new to interact with, so I’ve taken a look at where social media marketers are seeing the most success, and it may surprise you, but the answer isn’t Facebook. Although it currently is the most popular social media site, it only captures 12.5 percent of total networking page views (2011), which means there are thousands of other sites competing to grab your attention. In a study carried out by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth centre for marketing Research (2011) they found that companies that use a mix of social media saw more success. So although Facebook is an obvious choice, Twitter and Blogging are also high on the list.

From this table, which analysed ‘fast growing private firms’, the mix of social media they used which had provided them with the most success was message and bulletin boards. Although the study did show that “85% of companies viewed Facebook as successful’, a significant jump from the 54% of the year before, it didn’t match the success of message and bulletin boards where 93% of the companies reported it as a successful tactic.

It’s only natural to wonder where do we go when we begin to tire of our current online social sites? Although Facebook seems to be pretty steady in terms of competitors, I have read an article in a blog that I follow ‘Mobile news Authority” by Tony B from TheSEOAgency.com in which he blogs that the next big thing in social media will be Quora.com. Never having heard of the site I signed up to look for myself. I can see its potential, however I cant say that I’m ‘hooked’. (Although years ago I couldn’t be convinced to upgrade my myspace account to Facebook, and now I cant go a day without checking it, so who knows?) As ‘Quora’ is fairly new created in 2010 by ex- Facebook execs, it’s an online community that allows members to post an open question or contribute an answer to anything. However to a business I don’t see how they can use ‘Quora’ to their advantage. Yet Irene Au, head of design at Google praises it saying “ there’s a lot of really rich high quality content there. It’s one of my favourite sites to visit on a daily basis now” (2010). So maybe this is where the future lies.

So through looking at the history of digital advertising and new technological innovations its clear that business need strategic social marketing plans, which are durable enough to adapt to the ever-changing preference of their audience.

As discussed it is essential to choose the correct communications platform for your strategy, whether it be Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin or a Blog. As I have just landed my latest work experience role to take place at Chalk PR, I would like to mention their way of gaining PR for their clients through the use of a blog. However they were not the ones writing the blog instead they held a corporate event and invited all beauty bloggers to come and sample their clients products gaining great feedback not only for their company but for all their clients.

The beauty blogs were all read by members of the target audience of Chalks clients and the great feedback worked wonders for them, inspiring women to trial new products and creating a general awareness and buzz, exactly the purpose of PR. So this is an example of how social media works for not just advertising but for PR too.

So finally, how do you know if your social media advertising was effective? The obvious answer is through sales, as revenues are major factor in determining success. However if you measure your traffic and sales leads it can give you an understanding of the number of people you are interacting with the product or brand. As well as this the click-through and conversion rates show how many prospects take the next step. Customer interactions can indicate how the user feels about the product, a way to measure this is through the number of posts referencing the product, brand or company.

So when constructing a social media strategy as part of a marketing or advertising plan, it is worth not going for the obvious and jumping straight to Facebook. Thinking in the long term, it is best to plan something that is relevant to your target audience, and which is of value as this will be the most worthwhile.

At the end of the day the purpose of advertising is to sell products, services and ideas. And as technology, innovation, imagination and design are all major components of effective advertising it is through this unit of digital communications that I have become aware of how much of an important factor digital advertising is today.

Ethical Social Media

For my topic this week I want to take a look at what role social media is being used by brands to engage in or promote ethical activities, and what impact it may have on the brand. Marketing’s purpose is to demonstrate value and provide differentiation however some brands cause related marketing is actually doing more harm than good, the opposite in fact of corporate social responsibility. Take for example Bing which was brought to our attention in our lecture, it is a prime example of a brand trying to be socially responsible but in fact trying to attach brand recognition which is deemed highly unethical. We have this terrible tragedy going on in Japan, and although Bing seems to be trying to do their bit for raising donations by donating a dollar for every retweet on twitter, what they should have done was make the donation regardless. Their cause related marketing back-fired, they came under criticism for trying to use the quake as a branding opportunity and their use of social media to promote ethical activities’ back-fired.

I found this useful website that ranks the worlds most valuable brands based on how well they leverage social media to interact with customers, one that came to my attention is Starbucks (ranked first in 2009). Starbucks’ take on corporate social responsibility is by being responsible, acting ethically and doing things that are good for the planet, and donating to corporate philanthropy. Research shows that consumers will pick a brand with a good cause opposed to one without. However as all brands seem to be doing “their bit” it seems laughable.

Take breast cancer research, during the months of October every brand seems to be pink. The reason why most brands attach themselves to a good cause is to make them stand out from their competitors and so that the consumer will choose them. However if every brand is the same then where’s the differentiation? With technology how it is I believe that the key to engaging consumers with causes and the promotion of ethical issues lies within social media.

According to brand republic twitter are looking into having facebook style brand pages, however even if a brand has how ever many fans does not mean these fans are engaged with the brand. Brands should work towards making their own strategies to make the most of networking platforms, and this is what the brands that are ranking most engaged are doing.

http://www.engagementdb.com/Report

Internet: A Public Sphere?

Habermas defines the public sphere as the sphere of private people who join together to form a "public." I find it easier to understand it as an arena where people can get together and freely discuss shared problems and produce solutions.

So as technology has evolved since the public sphere became apparent in the eighteenth century, I find it hard to believe how the internet is under debate as to whether it is a public sphere or not. The internet is a medium available to normal people not just elitists and can provide a many-to-many connection allowing people to discuss matters of public concern in an “unrestricted fashion”. According to Habemas the internet “guarantees the freedom of assembly and association with the freedom to express and publish their own opinion”.  To me this meets my understood criteria of “the public sphere”.

However Mark Poster argues “the technology of the internet shouldn’t be viewed as a new form of public sphere”. He discusses how the internet threatens the government through unmonitorable convosations and mocks private property with the infinite reproducibility of information. However in my opinion it is because of these factors which I feel that the technology behind the internet is on the other hand creating conditions for ideal speech. Although the internet is fragmented there is the availability for using it to talk about private interests, and therefore does provide the basis for a public sphere, it is contrary to Posters arguments that I agree with Habermas that the internet is in fact a ever- increasing public sphere as it is uncensored, open, free, with the availability for anonymity and therefore holds all the qualities which a public sphere should.