How Social Media Might Change Search Behaviour

Notice how often social media like Facebook and Twitter is getting into the news lately?  The naysayers say it is a fad, just a phase that will eventually pass.  I’m not exactly the most sociable person on the net (yes, yes ironic I know), but I feel the frequent coverage is a sign that social media is gelling into our lifestyles and will be here to stay.  What this means for businesses is that they have to familiarize themselves with how social networks work and become a part of it as soon as possible.

Just look at social bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon or feed aggregators.  Notice how “news” is being defined and voted upon by members?  Information has began to be rated and then shared in social networks.  There’s too much content online, so our natural response will be to give a rating to a piece of information to decide if it is share-worthy.  Similarly, we will be more dependent on our network to filter our news for us.  Take a look now at Google and think about how it works. PPC and SEO.  Now you start to see we will start to change our patterns of infomation search?

Internet Marketing Tip: Run Your Website Like a Retail Store

Let’s suppose you set up a retail store.  Probably one of the first things you consider is location.  You try to find a location with the highest amount of traffic that fits within your budget.  Once you’ve gotten your location, you’ll do some design and renovation work, and start packing your store with merchandise.  Now that your store is ready, you might put an advertisement out in the papers or magazines, or send out flyers around your area.  You understand that its about:

1. Getting in the way of traffic
2. Providing the traffic with the product/service that they are looking for
3. Marketing to attract more traffic

If you get this 3 principles right, chances are your retail store will do fine.

Now think about setting up a website for your business.  A website is an extension of your business, it’s an online marketing tool and a “2D” version of your store.  Since it is a variation of your physical store, we should apply the same 3 principles to your website.

1. Getting in the way of traffic

The majority of traffic to your website will come from search engines so the first thing you want to do is to get indexed by Google, Yahoo and MSN, the 3 big ones.  Then you have to think about the other places where you could “set up shop” on the Internet.  Sites like online business directories and classifieds can be a good referral source.  To narrow down your target audience, go for the ones that are specific to your industry or geographic location.  The Internet is a huge marketplace, you’ll need to actively search for sites where you can promote your business.  Make it a weekly practice to post information of your business on a new website (make sure it’s relevant though).  It’s free most of the time so no excuses!

2. Providing the traffic with the product/service that they are looking for

Think about the visitors who will be accessing your site soon.  They will be coming to your site with the intention of gaining more knowledge about a particular topic.  If you have a site about golf clubs, and foresee that the majority of visitors will be golf club fanatics, tell them all they need to know and more about golf clubs.  Your goal here is to turn everyone who is interested in your products into a repeat visitor.  Just like in the 3D world, someone who stumbles upon your shop for the first time may not be ready to buy anything, but you want him to remember your shop when he is.

Make sure your website is professionally designed.  It helps provide a better image of your business and improves the browsing experience of visitors. Sometimes, the content and structures of websites are so ambiguous that visitors do not know what they are offering.  The worst thing that happens is when visitors are led to your store and see that it has nothing to offer.

3. Marketing to attract more traffic

You’ve listed your site on search engines and directories, and optimized the content on your site.  You’re ready to handle any leads and enquiries generated from your site, but your site is not running at full capacity.  Here’s where the marketing really starts.  You have an arsenal of marketing tools to choose from:

• Email Marketing
• Search Engine Marketing
• Social Media Networking
• Participation in Forums
• Link Building Campaigns
• Article Marketing
• etc.

Internet marketing covers many methods and you would probably think of  some ways that are unique to your industry.   You could even mix online and offline marketing to achieve better results.  Just remember that your objective is to make your online presence as visible as possible over multiple channels and in the process engage potential visitors.

To sum it up: It takes the same (if not more) effort and time to market your website as you would a retail store.  It’s tough to start but once you gain momentum you’ll start to see potentially exponential results.

Opportunities in a Recession (2)

With an expected 2% to 6% (depending on the source) shrink of the economy in 2009, the MNCs will probably be the worst hit.

If you are an SME however, you may have just gained entry to the “level playing field”.

In a short span of 6 months, corporations have been run into the ground.  Some of them rely too heavily on a failing sector, others fail because of poor governance.  The reason that they’ve been able to get by in the previous may have been their financial clout.  Sometimes in a bullish market, rewards may not be the direct result of perfomance.

Forward 6 months, and now the massive corporations are falling under their weight with the lack of strong foundations.  The cutbacks in jobs and manpower will lead to outsourcing.  There will be a search for alternative suppliers who show the potential of being the most cost-effective.  Most corporations will recover eventually but now is a good time to squeeze thorugh the gaps and expose yourself.

With this increase in search for B2B services, there is going to be more traffic on the Internet.  Is your company well positioned in the way of this surge of traffic?

Internet Usage Statistics in Asia

Singapore is unranked with 2,700,000 users but if we’re looking at penetration rates, Singapore is 5th after Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Malaysia.

Penetration rates:

• Japan – 73.8%
• South Korea – 70.7%
• Hong Kong – 69.5%
• Malaysia – 59%
• Singapore – 58.6%

Penetration rates are calculated using the number of internet users in a country divided by the population of that country.  That means that 1 in every 2 persons in Singapore is an Internet user.  Pretty encouraging stats if you are marketing to a local audience, no?

Why You Should Start Building Your Online Presence Today

A few years ago, it was difficult to justify building a website and using it as an effective marketing tool for your business.  Internet usage wasn’t as widely adopted as it is now, and the web had not established itself as a channel for sourcing products and services.   Then as web development services got cheaper over time, many business owners decided that spending money to develop a website didn’t even require justification.  It was just an affordable, one-off, sunk cost.  Things got worse when more others decided to develop a website for their company simply because “every company has one nowadays”.

This year, with the looming recession (are we there yet?), many businesses will review the cost of maintaining their assets; including websites, and start asking for some accountability.  The lucky ones will stumble upon the fact that a website today can become an extremely powerful weapon.

Search engines (Google in particular) has dramatically changed the purchasing pattern of the under-30s.  Do you still keep a copy of the yellow-pages and thumb through it when you want to look for a service or product?  The younger crowd prefers to let their fingers do the walking on their computers and mobile devices.  With search engines constantly improving to deliver faster and more relevant results, this phenomenon is definitely here to stay. Unconvinced about this demographic and its purchasing power?  Think about why the recent election went in Obama’s favor and what percentage of the voters fall into this category.  Today, these are just kids and young adults new to workforce, but very soon, they will become the major decision makers, and guess how are they going to get their information from and where do they network?

What this means is that while the rest of your competitors are still focusing on the brick and mortar (i like to call it 3D) aspects of their business, you should start to place more emphasis on your web assets.  Use online marketing channels and tools like social networks and PPC advertising to get your brand out to as many people as possible.  These methods are relatively cheap and perfoming such activities can actually help to fully utilize any spare resources especially in manpower.  A year of regular presence-building activities will set you far ahead of your competitor when they decide to market themselves online.

« Previous Page