I’d like to go back to one of my blog posts from last week, Building Good Online Branding While Being Consistent, and discuss one very important factor that was kindly brought to light by Dominique Lahaix co-founder & CEO of Cairn Inc., a privately held software technology company.

His comment was the following:

Thanks for the article. I like the stress on having an objective.

What I think is also critical is to target a specific audience.
Most marketers define their audience as “social media” and I think this is a huge mistake. The web is made up by a myriad of communities and tribes (that connects thru blogs, twitter, facebook) and what marketers should look at is how to select the communities that matter and develop the right value proposal, messages, strategies for these communities not to broadly and loosly diffuse messages into “social media”.

And my response to his statement was:

Yes, I entirely agree. Strategies should be developed to cater a specific audience from a specific network. It’s like having a campaign targeted to a Spanish-speaking audience and using the exact same campaign with the literal translation in English to target the English-speaking crowd…it’s just not going to work. Community profiles are different,they have different customs, demographics, psychographics,etc. Great point!

Like I said, great point. And this is why I decided to dedicate a couple lines to explain this very important aspect.

It’s true that in the thriving world of social media, things won’t always be as easy as they seem. At times, trying to define a comprehensive social media strategy for your brand can even be overwhelming.

But as Dominique stated, marketers cannot assume that the citizens of the ’social media’ universe are all the same, that they have the same likes and interests, speak the same language, or practice the same hobbies.

Before determining your social media objectives you need to first understand your audience. Once you have distinctive goals for your digital brand strategy you can then embark on ‘mini-campaigns’ which target specific audiences in specific channels. In short, your company goals will automatically help you determine the crowd you want to reach and further define the message you want to depict.

For instance, Twitter has proven to be effective on the CRM and customer service front, whereas Facebook can be more useful to interact with customers and foster relationships. And this translates to two different approaches for two different networks.

In addition, measuring your campaign results will become a less daunting task since the idea is to be able to examine each one of your campaigns individually and track your ROI until eventually pinpointing the social media channel that best fulfills your company’s objectives.

(hat tip to Dominiq for the inspiration)

One of the highlights presented at the festival was a round table where the most influential and deep connoisseurs of the field came together to consider how the idea of creativity and production has changed over the last few years, discussed future trends and how digital technologies are taking a significant part in the industry.

The session was dubbed “Run fashion, run. Part two,” where our MD, Marco Corsaro participated as new media specialist along with leading exponents of the fashion system such as moderator Antonio Mancinelli from Marie Claire, fashion designer Elio Fiorucci, curator and art expert, Gianni Mercurio, journalist and fashion critic, Roberta Filippini, and musician/songwriter, Saturn.

As experts in digital media, 77Agency was invited by Attila & Co., the PR agency responsible for organizing the event,  to illustrate the role of digital technologies, particularly in relation to the fashion and design industries, and to share information on the potential of the revolutionizing digital communication channels available today.

“We have been witnessing how new digital technologies are changing the way we communicate, - explained Marco Corsaro- and becoming new business models for an effective, promotional vehicle for companies and services. But most importantly, the potential these ‘tools’ have for diffusing information and generating interactivity, are already changing the rules of the game, and moreover, reducing the gap between brand and customer.”

For some time now, 77Agency, with its expertise in new media marketing, has worked with various fashion houses and designers of international fame with the ultimate aim of improving the external image of the brand, promote awareness and increase the online visibility of the products.

“We need to understand the key role that technology is playing now more than ever. It’s becoming the primary source of innovation and competitive advantage, especially in a high value-added industry such as fashion,” declared Corsaro.

Click the image below for the press release in Italian:

Below is a list of activities to help you bring your physical event online by leveraging online tools like social networks and the likes.

BLOG

If you have a blog already, make sure you write about the given event well in advance and also a few days prior to it. Look into your sector’s blogging community and identify the bloggers that would be most likely interested in blogging about the event, and of course, don’t forget to invite them to the event.

CREATE A FACEBOOK EVENT

If your brand or service already has a Facebook Page, include the event on the page, plus highlights of the event, keynote speakers, images, ways to participate, etc. Event’s can be easily shared between users and if you like, you may also promote your event by launching a highly targeted Facebook ad campaign.

After the event, you can add photos of the participants, tag people and even thank them for joining. It’s a great way to start conversation between you and your audience.

TWEET! + HASHTAGS

Tweeting during the event can generate great buzz and get people talking. If people talk and comment about it, that’ll get more people interested and awaken curiosity about upcoming events. A few days ago I attended the Forum Digitale della Comunicazione here in Milan and it was great in the sense that they had a Twitter live stream being projected in a huge screen and all tweets being shown included the dedicated event hashtag: #fd10tag (no idea why they added the ‘tag’ at the end).

The good thing about hashtags is that those who couldn’t make it to the event can 1. keep up with the live streaming as the event occurs and 2. look up news on the certain event using the hashtag on the Twitter search field.

SOCIAL NETWORK STATUSES

We all love the ‘what are you doing’ or ‘what’s happening’ questions, but moreover, we love answering them. Why not make good use out of these and promote your upcoming event, where you’re headed, which event your attending, why you’re looking forward to it and who your favorite guest speakers are, etc etc.

USE BUSINESS NETWORKS

Take advantage of online communities such as LinkedIn or Viadeo to promote your event. Networks such as these are advantageous for joining groups and communities where you can easily find subjects related to your industry or sector. Also, now that Twitter updates can be synced with your LinkedIn account people can keep up with your tweets and current activities as they are broadcasted on your status update.

UPLOAD PHOTOS + VIDEOS

A good way to generate some good noise is by creating photo albums on sites such as Flickr or Facebook or by uploading videos on YouTube. Online sharing applications are the best to manage your photos and share them with the world. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words…People enjoy viewing pictures/videos, not only are they entertaining, they also serve to inform and give people a general idea of what the event, conference, roundtable was like.

Try these out and let us know how it goes!

A few months back we wrote a post discussing the importance of dedicating time to customers and how the rise of social media use can positively impact customer service as well as enhance interaction between brands and consumers.

This still holds true as we haven’t stopped witnessing great efforts on behalf of brands, for instance, @WholeFoods, who have turned to social media and harnessed channels such as Twitter and Facebook to reach their customers and build relationships.

On this particular post, however, I wanted to discuss the importance and the role of employees in a business when it comes to social media sites.

If you think about it, your employees are the people who are most familiar with your product or service, hence, they’re your biggest brand ambassadors. Because the interent gives everyone and anyone a voice through these social platforms, why not use the opportunity to leverage  your employees and make them active advocates of your brand.

According to Nielsen, 2/3’s of the world’s interent population visit social networking or blogging sites. Your employees are now on the web more than ever and being very social. Facebook, for example, has recently revealed that the average user has 130 friends on the site. Just about anyone can get access to the Internet and communicate with likeminded individuals who share the same interests that they do.

You can make your employees your biggest fans and have them showcase why your product or service is their absolute favorite. Make your employees feel like they can engage online by encouraging them to participate in social networks, forums or blogs.

The idea is for your employees to start dialogue, give valuable insight about the company and become influential enough to encourage others to join the conversation.

Your employees represent one of the best solutions to connect your business with your customers and start conversation. The more natural, spontaneous and sincere their interactions are, the more they will appear like real humans who are not trying to sell anything to anyone…and this can only result in one thing: open, friendly dialogue.

Some common marketing challenges for marketers may include, increasing sales, increasing market share, boosting profits, reaching a wider audience, identifying new audiences, building a community, interacting more with current customers/prospects, creating brand awareness, so on and so forth.

When implementing an internet marketing strategy, whether it’s through a company’s website or via social media, it’s important you keep two things in mind: consistency and differentiation.

You want to make sure that whichever strategy you decide to implement is consistent with your brand, your brand personality and your commercial image.

Creating original and recognizable campaigns that communicate your brand’s values and benefits to your clients while keeping a consistent voice across all of your e-marketing channels is one way to go about.

Another aspect of it is identifying your unique situation in order to gain competitive advantage. For this you need to study the competition and pin point the areas that make you stand out from the rest and use that as your selling point and the angle for your campaign.

The key to an efficient online marketing strategy is to be consistent in your message and stay focused on the actual brand strategy marketing.

Every day new online marketing communication channels are introduced, which  slightly complicates the situation since businesses try to harness these as much as possible in order to drive traffic, generate leads and convert sales.

However, the focus should be on both- delivering the right message the right way while maximizing the internet marketing opportunites available.

As time goes by, it’s interesting to see how social networks have evolved, the new developments being made and how users are engaging and participating in the social Web.

Below is another great infographic produced by TrendStream which provides a snapshot of the social media involvement in the market. The global map was put together after interviewing 32,000 Web users in 16 countries in order to best show a unique perspective on web behavior and social media involvement worldwide.

It’s evident that each region of the world adopts these social technologies differently, but what’s even more interesting is seeing how brands implement social media in their daily activities and which type of social activity they prefer to use.

These are the areas in which they’ve categorized the survey:

And this is the actual infographic- click to enlarge and view pdf:

Some observations provided by the company include:

* The social web is mass market: Hundreds of millions of web users are creating and sharing content every month
* The massive impact of China: The vast Internet population coupled with hugely socially active set of web users, makes for a massive volume of content creators. However due to the inward looking nature of China’s internet economy combined with the language mean that this volume of content does not impact the broader Internet
* Low engagement in Japan: We also associate Japan with technology innovation, and actual while you might not think it, the low engagement is indicative of progress. Why? Our map shows PC activity and we know from this research that a huge number of Japanese users are bypassing PC altogether and using mobile devices to access social platforms and create and share content. Just over 34% of social network users only accessed through mobile in the month of the research, this is compared to 3% in the UK, a staggering indication of where the future is heading.
* The low level of microblog engagement: Despite the Twitter hype, microblogging is still not a mass social activity and nowhere near the size and scale of blogging.

The following infographic put together by the team at Flowtown, showcases some great figures that reflect how small to medium businesses are spending their advertising budget.

Conclusion: investment in social media to be less about advertising and more about engaging consumers one-on-one.

The following data is a compilation of social media statistics put together by Econsultancy showcasing the most significant facts and figures surrounding networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and online activities such as blogging and photo sharing.

If you’re a newcomer or are beginning to consider taking a plunge into the social media arena and exploit the opportunities (and challenges) social media offers, take a look at the following numbers:

* Facebook claims that 50% of active users log into the site each day. This would mean at least 175m users every 24 hours.
* Twitter now has 75m user accounts, but only around 15m are active users on a regular basis. It’s still a fair increase from the estimated 6-10m global users from a few months ago.
* LinkedIn has over 50m members worldwide. This means an increase of around 1m members month-on-month since July/August last year.
* Facebook currently has in excess of 350 million close to 400 million active users on a global basis. Six months ago, this was 250m… meaning around a 40% increase of users in less than half a year.
* Flickr now hosts more than 4bn images. A massive jump from the previous 3.6bn I wrote about.
* More than 35m Facebook users update their status each day. This is 5m more than towards the end of July 2009.
* Wikipedia currently has in excess of 14m articles, meaning that it’s 85,000 contributors have written nearly a million new posts in six months.
* Photo uploads to Facebook have increased by more than 100%. Currently, there are around 2.5bn uploads to the site each month – this was around a billion last time I covered this.
* There are more than 70 translations available on Facebook. Last time around, this was only 50.
* Back in 2009, the average user had 120 friends within Facebook. This is now around 130.
* Mobile is even bigger than before for Facebook, with more than 65m users accessing the site through mobile-based devices. In six months, this is over 100% increase. (Previously 30m).

Other significant facts include:

* There are more than 3.5bn pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, etc.) shared each week on Facebook.
* There are now 11m LinkedIn users across Europe.
* Towards the end of last year, the average number of tweets per day was over 27.3 million.
* The average number of tweets per hour was around 1.3m.
* More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook.
* Purpose-built Facebook pages have created more than 5.3bn fans.
* 15% of bloggers spend 10 or more hours each week blogging, according to Technorati’s new State of the Blogosphere.
* At the current rate, Twitter will process almost 10bn tweets in a single year.
* About 70% of Facebook users are outside the USA.
* India is currently the fastest-growing country to use LinkedIn, with around 3m total users.
* More than 250 Facebook applications have over a million combined users each month.
* 70% of bloggers are organically talking about brands on their blog.
* 38% of bloggers post brand or product reviews.
* More than 80,000 websites have implemented Facebook Connect since December 2008 and more than 60m Facebook users engage with it across these external sites each month.

Keep these handy for when you begin developing your brand’s social media strategy, however, the info presented above is only a bird’s eye view of this particular sector.

In order to be able to achieve your objectives using social media, it is best you understand your audience well and identify the right channels in order to be able to properly cater to your selected audience.

The study also shows that advertisers are planning to allocate between 6 and 20% of their digital marketing budgets to social media this year, compared to just 14% in the previous year.

The main reason for this dedicated budget is to drive brand awareness and consideration, as declared by 77% of respondents, while another 75% said to use it to drive engagement and advocacy and 47% to drive product sales.

Though respondents didn’t exactly pinpoint which department should handle all social media initiatives and implementations, the vast majority, 73%, said that the marketing department should cover such activities, whilst another 33% declared it’s a job for the PR department, followed by 16% who said customer services should handle it.

The greatest challenge for the social media industry? 74% respondents declared that providing ROI was the hardest to attain, followed by 64% who made reference to seeing measurable results- a topic we covered on one of our previous articles.

The study revealed the following to be amongst the top social media activities mostly claimed by marketers:

* Twitter & brand monitoring= 51% of respondents

* Facebook Pages= 47% of respondents

* Branded communities= 39% of respondents

* Blogger outreach= 37% of respondents

* Video Distribution= 37% of respondents

* User Generate Content= 37% of respondents

More interesting data from the study includes the percentage of marketers who have not yet embraced social media at all, which made up 7% of respondents. In contrast, 22% of respondents have made it a core part of their communications strategy.

So far Google’s real-time search has proven quite effective for many of us. For those who are pursuing social media as part of their online marketing campaigns, Google’s real-time search capability is certainly a strong point in favor.

What marketers should be considering right now is that having an active role in social media can really help drive traffic to their websites and help them attain better rankings on the SERPs. With the inclusion of live Twitter streams,(and the likes), in the SERPs, social media has never been so important.

Here are some quick-tips we put together to get your brand found in Google’s real-time search:

1. Keywords are key- in our previous post we mentioned the importance of content and keywords. This time, we’re advising you to use keywords in anything you write, from content and titles, to updates on Twitter and status updates on Facebook.

2. Have a social media presence- create your brand’s Facebook Fan Page, Twitter profile, YouTube channel, but first understand your audience and harness the social media channels that fit your brand. Get social, go live, and gain exposure on the Web.

3. Share your content- make sure its easy for you readers to share your articles by including share links, icons and buttons that are visible enough to just click & share.

4. Fresh content- make sure you post information as it happens. Be timely. The quicker your post the news, the quicker you’ll occupya space in the SERPs.

5. Be social- once you have an online presence and have created a series of public profiles in diverse channels, the next step should be to engage and interact with your audience. Increase your community, your followers, your fans, and dont’ be afraid to foster relationships. The bigger your audience, the easier it will be to spread your content and give visibility to your brand throughout the web.