Rob

25
Feb
2013

Dell Use Twitter to Facilitate Customer Feedback And Even Increase Sales

Although this video is not exactly new, it only came to my attention this week through a New York Times article by small business guru, Melinda Emerson, who singles out Dell as one of the first big companies to effectively utilise social media to both listen, and sell, to customers.

It seems that Dell has dedicated some serious resources (like Gatorade did in 2010) to monitoring their mentions on social media. And with the company mentioned more than 25,000 times each day, you can see why. Dell’s social media director Cory Edwards claims that the most important factor in being successful on social media is to really listen to your customers and show them you’re using their feedback to change the way you do business, which Dell has shown with its @DellCares Twitter presence.

On the sales front, by offering exclusive deals to customers through its @DellOutlet Twitter feed, the company is actually leveraging Twitter to increase sales. With ROI presumably easy enough to measure here, they can see what works and what doesn’t.  And with nearly 1.5 million followers, I can only imagine that the @DellOutlet Twitter movement is proving quite fruitful for them.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23WDGRQpi7s

Posted by Rob in e-Commerce, Social Media, Twitter
14
Feb
2013

SEO vs. CMO: The Growing Importance of Content Marketing Optimisation

Ah, Search Engine Optimisation. Once, the be-all and end-all of success on the web, making sure your site had an audience and your business a customer base. But with page-rank gaming a constant problem and more companies now producing regular online content such as blog posts, search engines are now seemingly taking the richness and quantity of content into the equation more and more when determining page rank. They want ‘Content Angels’ not ‘SEO Devils’.

With content marketing becoming an increasingly popular way of engaging with customers and getting your brand out there, it is becoming more and more important to make sure that this content is effectively optimised for search. Just in Time Financial PR agency demonstrate how simple it can be to achieve a surprisingly high page rank just by having optimised blog posts. In 10 days, with a number of posts focusing on related key-phrases, the company was the #1 ranked site for the ‘Financial PR agency’ search term.

Now more than ever, content is king. Kaiser the Sage provides some helpful CMO tips including making sure your content is easily shareable on social media (via share buttons), encouraging user interaction (i.e. comments), making it visual using images and videos etc. (Infographics are extremely popular at the moment) and internally linking to other relevant content on your site. Ultimately, the more value your content is to your target market, the more likely you are to engage your customers regardless of page rank.

ContentCreation

Image courtesy of Simply Zesty

Posted by Rob in Advertising, Google, SEO
04
Feb
2013

Real-Time Twitter Marketing During SuperBowl Power Cut

So not only did last nights SuperBowl throw up the usual frenzy surrounding those big budget commercials (not to mention some fantastic drama on the field and a pretty brilliant half-time show), but the 3rd quarter power outtage provided brands with a further opportunity to jump into the conversation too. This was the first SuperBowl that I actually followed live on Twitter and I was seriously impressed to see how quickly some brands reacted to the blackout.

Bravo to the very savvy digital marketers at Oreo, LinkedIn, Audi and Tide, to name but a few, that put out Tweets ridiculing the debacle within minutes of it happening. It goes to show what a great marketing opportunity the SuperBowl can be to brands, even the ones that don’t splash out for a $4 million thirty second TV spot.

Posted by Rob in Advertising, Real-Time, Twitter
28
Jan
2013

Introducing Google Now

Google Now is a new Google smartphone application that is set to further revolutionise the way in which our smartphones are integrated into our lives. The application is currently only available on devices running Android Jelly Bean which is why not many people are familiar with it despite launching over six months ago. Google Now incorporates many different Google features into a single interface, combining voice search and a system of ‘cards’ that automatically bubble up relevant information to the phone’s home screen on a contextual basis. The application provides the user with all the real time personalised information they could possibly need, presenting it automatically, even before the user asks for it.

It tells you today’s weather before you start your day, how much traffic to expect before you leave for work, when the next train will arrive as you’re standing on the platform, or your favorite team’s score while they’re playing. And the best part? All of this happens automatically. Cards appear throughout the day at the moment you need them.

Like Siri for the iPhone, Google Now is another example of how the smartphone is becoming more of a personal assistant to users, anticipating what you need before you ask for it. The video below shows the application in action highlighting how smartphone functionality is becoming more intuitive and is a good indication of how users will further integrate their mobile into their lives in the near future.

Posted by Rob in Android, Apps, Google
09
Jan
2013

Apple Is Being Hit Where It Hurts, It’s Apps

While most of the column inches dedicated to the Google vs. Apple smartphone war have focused on iOS and Android market share, Business Insider looks at the significance that the applications themselves might have in this battle.

With every Android phone on the market providing Google with a customer already ingrained into their environment, the company has upped its game in making Google-users out of iPhone customers.

Despite Apple removing the default YouTube app from its latest iOS upgrade and also replacing Google Maps in favour of its own deeply flawed offering, Google apps such as Chrome, YouTube and Gmail have become some of the most downloaded apps on the Apple store in recent months.

Maybe the shoddy Apple attempt at a maps application has given customers reason to question whether Apple’s pre-packaged iPhone apps can be bettered by the competition.

App Store Image

Posted by Rob in Apple, Apps, Google