Posts tagged web
Why your digital strategy is all about the ‘fans’
Feb 9th
Brands are increasingly migrating to Facebook, setting up Fan pages and getting rid of their own branded websites. But can social media replace a corporate presence on the web?
As you are probably well aware of by now, Facebook as yet again rolled out a new home page design. The site is still looking to make money you see, and to do that it needs to make the look and feel more attractive and navigation easier for users, including brands who have their own ‘Fan’ pages and profiles.
Everyone from Toyota to McDonalds, to Coca-Cola to UTalkMarketing has a Facebook ‘Fan’ page. And with the popularity and users’ willingness to become Fans, will Facebook Fan pages make branded websites redundant?
Coke is just one global brand that is shifting its digital focus away from traditional campaign sites and towards community platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube, as social media begins to dictate their marketing activity in 2010, according to newmediaage. Kelloggs has also made a similar move and will host digital activity on social media platforms including Facebook.
The benefits of Facebook are simple: it’s where your customers are spending the majority of their online time (some 350 million global customers, that is).
Facebook Fan pages also allow you and your customers to communicate in real time. Fans can also communicate with each other allowing you to listen in to the conversation and monitor what is being said about you.
Also, you’re only a mouse click away and don’t need to build a time consuming and expensive SEO and site awareness campaign to attract visitors
Moreover, creating a Fan Page is free, quick and easy. People actively engage on Facebook commenting, uploading photos and sharing interesting links, helping them to feel like part of the campaign. Awareness also spreads virally when people joining Fan Pages appears in the news feed.
So how do you build a successful Fan page on Facebook?
1. Network with other platforms
2. Creating a resource
3. Creating contests that include participation
4. Empowering pre-existing pages
5. Targeting the proper demographic
Creating a Facebook fan page is simple, but it will also take time to build up a community of followers. Build good content, make it easy to share, and let people know about it, and over-time maybe you too could phase out your corporate site.
The influential Web Celebs marketers need to be targeting
Feb 5th
Back in 1968 Andy Warhol predicted, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”
Today the technology to achieve global fame exists with the internet revolutionising business, media, marketing and communications practices
But who from the influential ‘Who’s Who of Web Celebs’ should marketers and PRs be aiming to influence themselves?
Forbes’ ‘Web Celeb 25’ aims to provide the answer. The annual poll champions “the people who have turned their passions into new media empires,” people whose fame grew out of, and is dependent on, the internet, from stay-at home-mums to geek entrepreneurs.
Each candidate in a list of over 200 Internet personalities was ranked in four areas: Web references as calculated by Google, traffic ranking of their home page as calculated by Alexa, TV/radio mentions and press clips compiled from Factiva, and number of followers on microblogging site Twitter. These four categories were totaled and weighted to produce a final score, then sorted to produce our rankings.
For the third year in a row, controversial gossip blogger Perez Hilton has been crowned king. His site attracts more than 7.2 million people a month, putting it among the 500 most-visited sites on the Internet, and Hilton has more than 1.77 million followers on Twitter.
The No. 2 Web Celeb, Michael Arrington, is one of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley, as editor of TechCrunch.
“A mere mention of a company on its pages can make or break a startup,” say Forbes.
But perhaps the most interesting entry is Pete Cashmore, in at No. 3. Cashmore came up with the idea for what has become one of the world’s most influential websites, not in Silicon Valley, but at his parent’s house in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Oh, and it was when he was a teenager too.
Today Mashable has more than 10 million unique monthly users reading its ‘outsider prespective’ on the web, while 24-year-old Cashmore has almost 2 million Twitter fans.
LA, NYC, London… Aberdeenshire. As Thomas L. Friedman claimed, “the world is flat.” We’re all now playing on a democratised playing field thanks to the net.
In the latest ‘Web Celeb 25’ edition eight faces appear for the first time. The highest-ranking new members are Evan Williams and Isaac ‘Biz’ Stone, cofounders of Twitter. The pair have more than 2.8 million Twitter followers between them, closely watched by legions of fans.
The youngest Web Celeb coming in at No. 25, is Shane Dawson, 21, who posts short comedy videos to his YouTube channel which has over 1.2 million subscribers. His videos have been watched more than 204 million times.
The Forbes ‘Web Celeb 25′
1. Perez Hilton – perezhilton.com
2. Michael Arrington – EditorTechCrunch.com
3. Pete Cashmore – Founder Mashable.com
4. Evan Williams & Biz Stone – Twitter
5. Kevin Rose – Founder Digg.com
6. Guy Kawasaki – GuyKawasaki.com
7. Heather “Dooce” Armstrong – blogging Mum at Dooce.com
8. Tila “Tequila” Nguyen – model/singer blogger at Tilashotsspot.buzznet.com
9. Gary Vaynerchuk – win expert blogger at GaryVaynerchuk.com
10. Cory Doctorow – author CrapHopund.com
11. Om Malik
12. Leo Laporte
13. Frank Warren
14. Robert Scoble
15. Chris Brogan
16. Wil Wheaton
17. Matt Drudge
18. Danny Sullivan
19. Jeff Jarvis
20. John C. Dvorak
21. Ana Marie Cox
22. Ree Drummond
23. Jason Calacanis
24. Seth Godin
25. Shane Dawson
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