Online Interactivity the Secret Sauce to Internet Marketing

Interactive Marketing is what differentiates the old marketing style from the new marketing wave. The biggest difference with both styles is that with the old style sellers would try to persuade their audiences by pushing down as much media as possible to everyone, not just their target audience to create traffic to their websites or stores. We all know the examples, T.V commercial, radio commercials, flyers, mail, emails, online Ads, etc... People would receive hundreds of offers from companies asking them to buy their services or products and then trying to create a trust or bond with the customers. It used to work to some extend, but we all now know that there was no relationship involved between the buyers and the sellers.

Online interactivity is about creating a conversation from human to human, instead of from corporation to individual, in a sense is a closer and more real transaction and it fosters trust between buyers and sellers. This is where companies can create a conversation with their target audience, develop a bond or trust and then have raving fans willing and eager to buy the services or products from the sellers. Online interactivity is not just about having a conversation, but about showing results in advance for the customers. As a result, people want to do business with the brand because they show that they care about helping solve the problems for their clients.

Now let's take a look at the problems associated with online interactivity and possible solutions:

1. Interacting with consumers takes a lot of time, and time means money. It is true that this something that it take money and it could be expensive, but there are different ways that online interactivity could be achieve without expending a lot of money. For example, tools like auto responders, how to videos, find an answer section or learning university as some companies like Ebay have. All of these systems could be automated and reduce the labor cost in the long run for companies.
2. Interaction is not always positive. This is something that it is a reality in any business you will always find unhappy customers and as brand you will be responsible for making sure that your online positive presence could be larger than the negative.
3. As more companies interact, your brand isn't so special anymore. It is true, but as a competitor you should be able to create joint ventures programs with your own competition and split your lunch instead having nothing at all. Most importantly, differentiate your brand from your competition and you will have more chance as well.
4. Once you start a consumer "friendship," it's hard to stop. If you want to create a relationship with your customers, you have to make sure that they have a spokes person that they can associate with the will reduce the risk of having them associate with the employee instead.
5. Consumer interactions with each other may damage your brand image. This is definitely has to be monitor and control. But the only true way avoid this is to create results in advance for people and a strong trust based relationship that could help diminish the negative effects of having your competition use it against you.

At the end the only possible solution to this is making sure that you can deliver far more value than what your customer expect from the exchange of their time and money.

Information is a Commodity Available in Many Flavors

Let's supposed we are making a line waiting to pay our groceries and we pick the first magazine available with our eyes closed,  probabilities are that you will end up with the latest tabloid about how Brad Pitt  and Angelina Jolie will have a hybrid child crossed with an Gray Alien. Funny right? but doesn't that analogy applies to us when we research information online about our Presidential candidates? I think it we all know that we are being bombarded by media 24 hours a day about what,who and how we should make the important decisions in every area of our lives. In fact, we the average American receive about 3000 media messages a day, so is in our best interest to disseminate the information that we will invest our time into. Is the information that we see online being manipulated? Of course, we all know that it is. As a matter of fact, they are many corporations paying millions of dollars to drive us towards making a decision in favor. Politicians are not any different when it comes to trying to influences us to help them get our votes and the web is being used in as platform to reach as many of us as possible. Now can we trust the information that we get from the Internet? I would say that it our job as a consumer to research the sources and determined if the information is filtered or unfiltered to evaluate if it suits your taste or needs. When it comes to researching information on the Internet is imperative that we take the same effort as when we are making an important purchasing decision that will influence our future. For example, if we want to find out information about a Presidential candidate we should use sources that eliminate media, special interest or corporations. We are who make the decisions that will direct the future of our society and if we care enough we should do a hard work in choosing the sources that will influence our thoughts and decisions. Is a no brainer that social media is popular medium of communication in our times and it should be expected that political candidates will use their money and power to manipulate it and even use it against each other. Now if you agree with me on this then the idea of researching of who is funding your political candidate may make sense as well. We should believe what we think is our best interest for our future, not what others want to push down on us.  Resources: Google Answers (2002),American advertising in the media   http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=56750>

.

Is LinkedIn Likely to be Linked Out of SM?

We all recognize names the big SNS that have change the way to communicate with each other like Facebook, Twitter, Linked in ect.. but is Linked in one of those SNS that will be around in the future to stay? will this become the most valuable tool for getting a job in the future? Will it dominate the global market like FB  or is it going to left in the dark like any other fad ??

So Why or Why wouldn't make it five years from now? Let's examine the strengths and weakness of LI.

First, is LI really a SN? well we could yes and no, for example most of the social media tools that we know about is meant for couple purpose show off the things that we like to brag about like: who has the most friends, partying, vacations, being funny, having babies, new cars... you get my point. So in other words LI is not really competing with FB or Twitter in that sense, but it is still a SN that is targeted to a specific niche business professionals and corporations. LI is known as a professional social network PSN and that is one of their competitive advantage because they have a more serious approach to social networking.

Second, LI is tools that many people and corporations are using to do reference check, find expert advice and of course network with other professional in and out of your industry.

Now even though that it is a great tool for marketing your brand or yourself in the virtual market it has some disadvantages that could jeopardize its future. Number one, as we all know business etiquette and cultures are quite diverse in this global professional market. Is easier to become friends or follow people because they are friends or family with someone that you know, but in the business environment is different specially if when cultural barriers are present.

Also, let's face it professional networking is not as fun as becoming friends with people that know your friends. Lastly, they have a low time spent per session per user LI is 6.5 minutes a day FB 55+ minutes a day so this means that they have less time to sell their advertisings and attract new unique visitors.

If LI really want to stay on top of as the PNS it needs to work on overcoming cultural barriers and increasing its audience. For example, LinkedIn recently acquired Mspoke a company that provide its members with more relevant insight from professionals. Also, I think getting companies or professional to offer discounts and giveaways will increase sharing within the network, people are more willing to share content if there are incentives. So being the among the websites with the most traffic
 ( number 12 in the world ) can it really stay there without making the necessary changes?

Will have to wait to find out...


References:

Miyasaki, Anthony (2012)”Will Twitter, LinkedIn, and Tumblr Really Matter Five Years from Now?” E-Marketing for sensible Folk (February 14)  http://www.sensibleemarketing.com/

Wikipedia (2012) LinkedIn  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn

Mashable (2010)LinkedIn gives brands a platform to promote themselves  http://mashable.com/2010/11/01/linkedin-company-product-pages/

How can SOPA & PIPA affect yout Internet biz

This is probably the first time in history that we have so a large online protest and it took place on January 18th, we had two legislations that could change the way internet surfers operate. One is the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA), but how may this be of concern for the Internet marketing newbies and the big corporations, will explore.

First, let's examine the facts:

    -National Purchase Diary Group reports that just 37% of music acquired by U.S. consumers in 2009 was actually paid for.

-From 2004 through 2009 alone, an approximate 30 billion songs were illegally downloaded through  file-sharing networks.

   -Since  peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing sites like Napster, Limewire, Bearshare and others emerged in 1999, music sales in the U.S. have dropped 47%, which means from $14.6 billion to $7.7 billion.

    -Frontier Economics recently estimated that U.S. Internet users annually consume between $7 and $20 billion worth of digitally pirated recorded music.

 - The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, announced that digital theft of movies, music and  content that is copyrighted  takes up enourmous amounts of Internet bandwidth:
 24 percent globally, and 17.5 %n the U.S.

Now we know that these facts are not just the effects of online piracy... have we ask ourselves how is this affecting all of us?

One analysis by the Institute for Policy Innovation concluded the online global piracy causes losses every year of $12.5 and 71,060 U.S. jobs were lost which resulted in a loss of $2.7 billion in workers' earnings. Additionally  a losses of $422 million in tax revenues, $291 million in personal income tax and $131 million in lost corporate income and production taxes.

So what would it mean if these legislation take effect or not?

1. This could also means the end of social media because sharing of photos, videos, music and copywritten content  would be breaking the law.
2. Content that includes copyrighted content (such as white papers or  webinars that contain third party graphics, even if properly attributed) could potentially put at risk or even lead to a shutting down of the company's online presence.
3. Blog syndication sites will be affected and run the risk that they could be shut down by a unintended violation from one or any of their source feeds

Now on the other hand:

Pehaps most importantly, the impact it will have on artist creative lose. All the artist, singers musicians, producers and songwriters that will not get paid the royalties and fees they’ve worked for. We can say that almost all artists (95%) depend on royalties to be able to make a living.

So we have to valid points and this  is a decision that will be in the hands of the people, now this reminds me that one there's is nothing for free in life, if one loses we all lose.So Who really can make the difference, The Big Corporations or the People?






A little more reading:

 Estimating the global economic and social impacts of counterfeiting and piracy. A REPORT COMMISSIONED BY BUSINESS ACTION TO STOP COUNTERFEITING AND PIRACY (BASCAP) February 2011
http://www.iccwbo.org/uploadedFiles/BASCAP/Pages/Global%20Impacts%20-%20Final.pdf 


Recordind Industry Association of America, Free for All, March 2011
http://riaa.org/blog.php?content_selector=How_Digital_Piracy_Harms_Everyone

National Purchasing Diary
https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/aboutnpd/!ut/p/c4/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0os3iT4JAAU09LYwMDE2dnA8_QQCPzECdvAwMjA_2CbEdFANOUQTg!/