Twitter's Language Targeting

Dominguez (1998) said that 'language is a tool or resource of communication, an expression of personality, and a signal of identity'. It's so critical for brands to express themselves through what they write, in terms of marketing language - however the point remains that brands, now, should infact be thinking of the bigger picture. If your markets aren't receiving your message due to language barriers, how long before they find a brand that is catering for them? With social networking platforms still going strong as a marketers dream, Twitter has concocted another way for advertisers to reach their ever-expanding markets.

Twitter has introduced the latest feature to lure advertisers into their social networking hemisphere - language targeting. Advertisers who use the site will be able to target users on their site according to their language. Promoted and Sponsored Tweets can be customised in a language that their audience understands, whilst users are able to see highly relevant ads in their language. Twitter already determines users language through profile settings, and what activity they're participating in. So the introduction of language-specific analytics is a great bonus for brands, who can use the data to identify new audiences, or to further engage in multi-lingual content.

With credit to Emerging Spaces blog on Twitter Language Targeting, there are two main ways in which a brand could use language targeting:

• A brand which has a local market promotion could target in-language ads directly to users in that market.
• The update can also benefit markets with a large population that speak a variety of languages, which in effect means that advertising 'highly relevant ads' may allow for the audience to connect better.

It should be noted that this feature should be carefully put to use, it's important to use it for Promoted Tweets, rather than Promoted Accounts. As those who follow Promoted Accounts will expect the language to be that in the ad, whereas Promoted Tweets will allow for the audience to receive relevant information in a language that suits them. Personally, I think the idea is quite beneficial to all brands, and especially those who use social networking as a strong marketing platform. For some companies, branching out to other markets can be tricky, but with the use of language analytics, brands are able to identify who and where, in terms of displaying information. 

Twitter's potential for organisations is extensive, it is a tool to create electronic word of mouth, a viral marketing mechanism and as a form of online word of mouth branding (Burton & Soboleva, 2011). It is key for external communication with customers, and that's what is so important. Communication. Tailoring your brand to meet language needs of alternative markets suggests adaptation, and versatility. It's hard to fault an advertisement that personally addresses a market which in the past may have been previously neglected.

REFERENCES:

Dominguez, F. (1998) International Journal of the Sociology of Language. Vol. 1998 Iss: 134, p1-13.

Burton, S. & Soboleva, A. (2011) "Interactive or reactive? Marketing with Twitter", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 28 Iss: 7, pp.491-499.

Value The Video

In a time when going viral is seen as an achievement, if your company isn't jumping on videos as a marketing tool - you're slacking. Whilst images offer something for consumers to look at, and text offers an explanation, videos allow you to communicate exactly what you want to your audience. Insivia states that in 2012, video was the fastest growing form of ad format, and not only that, but 90% of users say that seeing a video about a product is helpful in the decision process. Luke (2013) gives a great summary of what kind of benefits video marketing can have for your company, such as:

• Showing your firms personality, without a face-to-face meeting with your prospect.
• A video is searchable content, and can improve SEO.
• People are much more likely to watch a video than read a full page of text.
• Video is easier to consume on mobile devices (my Go Mobile blog touches on how important mobile friendly content is!)

So, are you taking advantage of video marketing?

What's effective?

source: Dove Real Beauty Sketches

Released in 2013, the Dove Real Beauty Sketches video has generated nearly 63 million views on YouTube, not including postings of the video on other platforms. Dove make a brilliant campaign, by proving that it's not always about how you directly advertise your product/service, nowadays, consumers are more enticed by the way you portray your industry or culture. It's important to realise that everyday consumers are flooded with ads to buy products, being creative and original can spread a buzz about your company that differentiates it from the rest. Videos help with communicating services to customers during 'high-consideration touchpoints', and can have a positive impact a customers decision during high consideration purchases, such as cars (Sluis, 2014). Some ideas of how to integrate videos into your marketing strategy are highlighted by Luke (2013), these include; company overview videos, video bios, explanatory videos, training/educational videos, video press release, training videos and email videos.

What's not effective?

With credit to Megan O'Neill from her article on 5 Reasons Web Marketers Fail With Viral Video Campaigns, here's a few pointers as to why video's can fail:

• Your video is too much like a commercial - people are less likely to share advertisements, they share shocking, funny, surprising, moving etc.
• Your campaign is unoriginal - people can watch thousands of different videos online, infact if yours doesn't interest them within the first 10 seconds, they've already got 3 more lined up on a new tab.
• You didn't spend enough time on metadata - make it searchable. Tags, description, title, all key things to concern yourself with with creating a video.
• You aren't promoting it right - sharing on social network platforms only works when you have a huge following, contact influential bloggers, bigger companies have the benefit of possibly hiring an expert within the budget.
• Finally, great idea, bad execution - this could be down to anything, production quality, script and acting, non-engaging content. Make sure you're always getting honest feedback and advice.

REFERENCES:

Luke, K. (2013) 12 Ways to Integrate Video into Your Marketing. Journal of Financial Planning. Vol. 26, No. 9, pp18-19.

Sluis, S. (2014) More Brands Invest in Video Marketing. Customer Relationship Management. Vol. 18, No. 3, p13.

Are you LinkedIn?

With over 300 million users, LinkedIn could be said to be the most 'professional' platform of social networking, among the ranks include entrepreneurs, CEO's, MD's and for businesses - CUSTOMERS. There are huge benefits of using the platform, since it's predominantly focused on B2B connections. Hershberger (2012) suggests it enhances your SEO efforts, contributes to brand recognition and perception, and allow for you to become a leader and a resource amongst your online community. There are endless ways to promote your company and it's offerings to a huge audience. So I've compiled a few things to help you get started, and to use the platform effectively as a marketing tool.

source: LinkedIn Marketing Solutions

Content Marketing Score

For businesses, the unveiling of LinkedIn's new Content Marketing Score is something you don't want to miss out on, and should be taking full advantage of. The tool is a recommendation engine that allows for businesses to 'quantify their impact', it measures the engagement between your content and your audience, and allows you to see how you compare to your competitors. Trending Content (click link for interactive infographic) allows for businesses to tailor their content specifically to match which topics resonate most with specific audiences. These two new tools are bound to have a positive impact on the way businesses market their products/services, and if you're not familiar - get familiar!

LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn Groups can help generate leads for any business, joining groups within a particular industry or category allows businesses to not only find prospect customers and business leads, but help create a more influential presence for the company. Once part of a group, LinkedIn allows you to filter the membership list to find influencers and prospects based on different criteria. Nemo (2014) swears by personalising invites to connect, not taking the time to do this can make you appear as lazy, or even worse, a spammer.

LinkedIn Polls

This function has many great uses that would be a waste for any marketer using the platform. Conner (2014) lists a couple of the ways you can utilise the function, which I'll briefly sum up for you:

• Obtain quick opinion results for column and blog topics/trends.
• Obtain product/service feedback (an absolute essential, saves time, resources and can be beneficial to hear some new ideas).
• Conduct immediate market research - addressing the information you need quickly and efficiently.
• Link it to other social networking platforms - Tweeting/Facebooking poll results could increase your following and gain interest from additional people.
• Use polls to generate offers - find out what interests your prospects!

As far as I can see, the only drawbacks for the platform may be that for some businesses, their target prospects may not be LinkedIn potential, due to age mainly. Hershberger (2012) suggests one drawback is the time taken to initially build your profile, apart from that, the day to day running doesn't take much effort. Also, the social network isn't actually seen as a marketing platform quite yet, it's still in quite early days and looked upon as a professional Facebook, so to speak. 

REFERENCES:

Conner, C (2013) 'Five LinkedIn Strategies You Haven't Thought of Before' Forbes [Online] <http://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylsnappconner/2013/10/27/five-linkedin-strategies-you-havent-thought-of-before/> [accessed 8th May 2014]

Hershberger, T (2012) Using LinkedIn as a Marketing Tool. ABA Bank Marketing. Vol. 44, No. 5, p37.

Nemo, J (2014) 'Three ways to generate leads with LinkedIn Groups' Social Media Examiner [Online] <http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/generate-leads-with-linkedin-groups/> [accessed 8th May 2014]

Go Mobile

It's no secret that having a mobile friendly site will infact increase your customer base (and hopefully sales), and whilst companies are still not focused on producing such 'mobile friendly' sites, they're not only losing customers but also causing annoyance to search engines such as Google. Google has continued to push such companies to produce these sites, not only for the company's benefit, but also in the hope that the use of Google to find such sites will continue to be used. According to Google Mobile Ads Blog 61% of people would quickly switch to another site if they couldn't find what they were looking for straight away - and thats a big percentage to consider. Google also say companies without mobile sites are helping their competitors, not only that, but they're ruining their reputation in such a digital friendly age.

source: Google Mobile Ads Blog

Hend (2014) created a study which compromised some of the most important criteria that needed to be met in order to produce a good mobile friendly site. After having a read through, really the list is quite extensive, so I've put together a few bullet points which should summarise some of the key criteria that customers are looking for:

• Easy to learn and navigate the site, including easy return to home/main screen.
• Links that go to other mobile friendly pages!
• Sufficient space between links, to avoid what the author refers to as 'fat finger syndrome'.
• Input of numbers and letters easily (so true, card details!)
• NO under construction pages, NO broken links, NO pages in separate windows!

Although some of these points seem pretty obvious to some of us (especially those who use mobile friendly sites often), it's one of those things that can easily missed, and in actual fact cause such deterrence from a site that it's so easy to lose customers. It's also important to note that creating a mobile friendly site is relatively easy, there's tonnes of templates and tools to help create them, a long with cheap production costs. But they do have their drawbacks, unless done correctly, creating a mobile site can affect search engine visibility. The good news is that Google have actually released a Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, and if you scroll to page 24, you'll find a section dedicated to improving SEO especially for mobile sites.

REFERENCES:

Google Mobile Ads Blog (2012) Mobile friendly sites turn visitors into customers [Online] <http://googlemobileads.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/mobile-friendly-sites-turn-visitors.html> [Accessed 8th May 2014]

Hend S. Al-Khalifa, (2014) "A framework for evaluating university mobile websites". Online Information Review, Vol. 38 Iss: 2, pp.166 - 185.