Mediaboss Marketing

Triangulating Social Media, Search Engine Marketing (Google AdWords), and SEO Do you have enough resources to spend on social media, SEO, and search engine marketing (SEM)? Are you getting what you need in return? At Upaya Services, our skill set is tuned to your return. Our focus on the overlap between social media marketing (SMM), SEO, and search engine marketing (SEM) allows Google's recent refinements to their search algorithm to work to your advantage. Upaya identifies your short and long-term social media marketing (SMM) needs so that you can attain your search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) objectives. We integrate your SMM, SEO, and SEM while actively measuring results, refining our outreach, and providing you with the training, skills, and resources to manage your own projects. Social Media We help you develop your social media ecosystem. What are the best social media channels for you to reach your audiences? We'll set up your social media assets, optimized for SEO, and show you how to maintain your social media and keep it up-to-date. We help you create social media that shares relevant content across multiple channels. Everyone has a Facebook page; "How active is it?" is the question. Engaging content is the key. What makes people remember you? Upaya will show you how easy it is to create and source compelling content. We'll identify the best ways to activate your community through better "tagging" and "seeding" content. Great content will keep your community involved and motivate them to action. Social media can be time-consuming. Learn how to most efficiently handle social media for your business to get the best ROI. Train your staff to use relevant social media tools, create and re-purpose content, and promote engagement of your community. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) In today's crowded online environment, most people use Google and/or other search engines to find the content they are looking for. Let our search engine experts optimize your website and social media channels. Upaya's experience with a diverse clientele has given us a real-time perspective on what works and why. We do keyword research using Google Analytics and AdWords and optimization. Instead of competing with your competitors for expensive keywords, find the niche keywords that your customers are searching for. Quality content engages (video, commenting on blogs, sharing/commenting/liking on FB, re-tweeting, etc.), which improves SEO. Drive traffic from high-volume sites (media outlet, Twitter hashtags, Huffington Post, and LinkedIn Groups) to your digital ecosystem (website, blog, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Google+). Use content that is keyword relevant to reinforce the overlap between SEO, SEM, and SMM. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Our Google AdWords expertise allows you to maximize your SEM budget, target relevant audiences, and drive traffic to your web channels (web, social media, and blog). We do keyword research using Google Analytics and AdWords and optimization. Find the niche keywords that your customers are searching for. We conduct a SEM audit to identify the areas to improve your SEM. We research what campaigns are most relevant for your short and long-term objectives. We conduct A/B testing, so that after 2 to 3 months, you have the insights to maximize your SEM budget. Why Upaya? The Upaya team has the skills to marshal the resources you must have to succeed. We do not see obstacles, only opportunities to craft creative solutions to every type of problem. Most important, we are expert at making possibilities out of the resources that you already have within your organization. Upaya Services respects how limited resources -- money, human, and leadership can limit an organization's achievement and growth. Our experience with a diverse clientele has given us a unique perspective on what works and why. We don't add as much to your team as to multiply its effectiveness. Give Upaya a call to schedule a complimentary call to discuss how we can help you. We provide general consultations, design and implementation, DIY help and training. If it's something in between you're after, give us a call, and we'll be happy to help. Contact us today for more details regarding pricing and services. Ben Simon-Thomas Principal and Founder Upaya Consulting For more information, visit Upaya Services.

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Oakland, CA 67 Social Media Marketing Consultants near you

313@Somerset has appointed boutique digital marketing consultancy Hashtag Interactive to manage its social media duties for a year. Hashtag Interactive will be responsible for313@Somersets Facebook and Instagram accounts, content design and development, media planning and community management.

Hashtag Interactive is thrilled to be working with a dynamic, trend-setting company like 313@Somerset. Its diverse customer base and premium brand partners provide a unique value proposition that allows us to develop different campaigns and create interesting new content, Vincent Chin,managing partner, said in a statement confirming the move.

313@Somerset joints Hashtag Interactives stable of clients includingCivil Aviation Authority of Singapore, Danone Singapore, the Singapore Airshow and the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources.

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The rest is here:
313@Somerset appoints agency for social media duties - Marketing Interactive

Local residents are 'influencers' in this new campaign

Published Aug 20, 2017 at 5:25 pm (Updated Aug 20, 2017)

Claudia Jacobs of Goshen accepts the keys to the first Lincoln she will be driving from Shay Ramirez of Healey Lincoln.

Participants of the Healey Lincoln Behind the Wheel Experience with their vehicles.

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GOSHEN Healey Lincoln in Goshen is expanding the way it markets its product line by using influencer marketing to raise awareness of its brand in an effort to create long-term product loyalty via social media platforms.

With the participation of five area residents, Healey Lincoln launched its influencer marketing campaign on Aug. 1 where five local influencers were handed keys to a new Lincoln.

They are: Chuck Benfer, IHeart Media Inc. market president; Alexis Eggleton, creator and author of the nationally-recognized blog, Trading Cardio for Cosmos; Claudia Jacobs, owner of Claudia Jacobs Designs; Quanah Jay Hicks, known as Quanah, a singer/songwriter, music producer, multi-instrumentalist, photographer, cinematographer, director of films and composer of film scores; and Victor Vargus, DJ and party motivator.

Over the next five months, each will drive a Lincoln Navigator, Continental, MKC, MKX and MKZ. The five have agreed to drive the cars with no strings attached with the only requirements to post their honest experiences on their personal social media platforms.

I think its an interesting way to test drive a luxury vehicle, said Claudia Jacobs. I will be totally honest about my observations and driving experiences. No one will be vetting any of my comments or telling me what to post.

Healey Lincolns campaign is one of the first of its kind in the automotive industry.

We realize innovative business practices will help further ensure our success as a dealership, said John Koerner, executive general manager. This means looking at different ways to reach out to the local market regarding our product line. Because of the power of social media platforms, we believe this is a great addition to our marketing strategies.

Influencer marketing, new to the automotive and other industries, allows a company to reach new audiences through an individuals use of social media. In this instance, a persons followers will see what he or she thinks about the cars he or she is driving via written posts or posted videos.

Were asking our five participants, who have never owned a Lincoln, to get behind the wheel of five different models to experience the luxury, comfort and customer service that comes with owning a Healey Lincoln, said Koerner. We look forward to hearing about their experiences, whether theyre good or bad, on their social media platforms.

Participants are not being paid for their participation. Lincoln Healey is providing the vehicles at no cost, including insurance. Participants only need to cover gas costs. Koerner is hopeful the influencers followers will want to know more about the Lincoln product line.

Through social media, their friends will come along for a virtual ride and learn more about Healey Lincoln, he added.

Read more from the original source:
Healey Lincoln's new approach to marketing - The Chronicle

This article first appeared on The Conversation.

More than 20 years after democracy it seems incredible that a leading South African insurance company OUTsurance would put out a Fathers Day advertisement which featured mostly white dads. If their marketing team didnt see the problem, citizens on social media certainly did and helped the company to see the error of its ways and fast.

Within hours of screening the advertisement, a Twitter storm had broken out and the commercial was retracted. OUTsurance issued an apology for any offence caused. It was a quick and decisive response which is generally the right way to respond in a crisis spoiled only by the fact that the company subsequently laid the blame at the door of a junior lady on the social media team.

The OUTsurance experience underlines the growing importance of social media in branding. Branding scholars Chiranjeev Kohli and Anuj Kapoor point out that:

This rapidly evolving landscape has left managers at a loss, and what they are experiencing is likely the beginning of a tectonic shift in the way brands are managed.

OUTsurance isnt the only firm to have been caught in a social media storm. Ubers CEO Travis Kalanick was forced to step down after a prolonged online assault leading to a shareholder revolt. London-based public relations firm Bell Pottinger had to lock its Twitter handle recently because it had been Twitter-bombed by South Africans outraged at the firms service to the controversial Gupta family.

Another South African business, the family restaurant franchise Spur, suffered considerable brand damage after a video showing an altercation between a (white) man and a (black) woman at a Johannesburg outlet went viral, causing a racially charged firestorm. Spur was castigated from different directions for mishandling the matter.

These cases show how social media gives consumers the ability to influence business behaviour. But, we argue, this power should be channelled in a constructive way to affect lasting change.

A NEW KIND OF ACTIVISM

There are many examples of deliberate online anti-brand behaviours targeting well-known brands such as American Express, Coca Cola, and Wal-Mart. Widely respected New York Times technology columnist Farhad Manjoo recently noted that online campaigns against brands have become a powerful force in business by handing power to consumers. It has also given birth to a new kind of political activism:

Posting a hashtag and threatening to back it up by withholding dollars can bring about a much quicker, more visible change in the world than, say, calling your representative.

This is, of course, not good news to most corporations, businesses and politicians. Those operating in the public domain know the importance of protecting their reputation and fear the power of social media. Many organisations pay research companies for daily feedback on how their brand is perceived. In addition to newspaper clippings and magazine articles, they also have to sift through thousands of tweets and emails.

Not all negative comments deserve to be dealt with publicly. Some outrage may be the result of a vindictive individual or interest groups with less honourable intentions. Responding to comments such as these may only fan the fire, doing more harm than good.

But the power of social media is such that even a falsehood can cause immense damage, ruining businesses and individuals. Social media can awaken the mob mentality in people. All thats required is for people to become angry - and have access to a medium where they can be relatively anonymous and vent their fury.

Social media brings out the best and the worst in people. On the one hand, it gives the power to do untold damage. On the other it can be used to do tremendous good.

DISCIPLINING BUSINESS

Take the case of American airline United Airlines. The video of how security dragged Dr David Dao off a flight in April 2017 after he refused to leave his seat when he was selected to be bumped off due to overbooking went viral on the internet.

Millions of people saw Dr Dao being dragged, bleeding and injured, off the plane. There was an enormous backlash from consumers slamming the airline - and other airlines - for the practice of overbooking.

The consequences of all the anger led to the airline revising its policy and operations and spilled over into wider investigations into general procedures at airlines. This resulted in new legislation being drafted in the US, which could prevent airlines from forcibly removing passengers seated on an overbooked flight and providing compensation for those not allowed to board.

A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD

Social media is here to stay - if anything its use is set to become more sophisticated. According to Pew Internet Research, YouTube reaches more 18- to 34-year-olds than any cable network in the US, 76% of Facebook users visited the site daily last year with over 1.6 billion daily visitors, and 51% of Instagram users engage with the platform daily. These trends are spreading across the globe.

Users may also become more discerning about which sites they visit and how often. For companies, this means a need to remain vigilant and being aware of how to react appropriately. They undoubtedly stand to profit as well - through clever marketing campaigns that make use of social media platforms.

But the biggest winners could be consumers - should they learn to properly use the power of social media to organise into interest groups, define objectives and agree on courses of action - thereby exerting pressure on companies to see the kind of change in corporations that they would like to see in society as well.

Mlenga Jere is an associate professor of marketing, University of Cape Town.

Raymond van Niekerk is an adjunct professor, with expertise in branding, marketing, business strategy, corporate citizenship and social responsibility at the Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town.

More here:
[ANALYSIS] SA social media is giving consumers power to discipline corporations - Eyewitness News

August 18, 2017

Bots are the smartest addition to your marketing team available.

Murray Newlands

VIP Contributor

If you own a business, you can't afford to ignore chatbots. While often considered a simple customer service tool, these machines can now help businesses automate a huge variety of processes. They can also act as virtual assistants, giving back time to employees to focus on more important, revenue-generating activities. You need to know how to build a chatbot for your marketing campaign and how you can make the most of it.

Thanks to advancements in the artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP) that powers these machines, they're now capable of undertaking a huge variety of tasks, making them an integral part of your various teams. With machine learning, they're able to learn from the data they gather, thus allowing them to engage with your customers where they're most likely to be: on social media messaging applications.

With that in mind, you can now integrate your chatbot into your social media advertising and digital marketing campaigns as a whole. Luckily, today, with the help of chatbot building solutions like ChattyPeople, you can create a chatbot in a matter of minutes, for free, without any prior programming experience whatsoever.

Related:Top 10 Best Chatbot Platform Tools to Build Chatbots for Your Business

The platform comes with a visual interface and a powerful dashboard that gives you a 360-degree view of your audience. Moreover, these chatbots can be specifically designed to help with your online marketing campaigns by:

Simply building a chatbot is not enough to effectively implement it into your organization's scheme. To create an efficient chatbot for your marketing campaign, you must remember to:

As with every marketing campaign, you need to establish what you want to achieve and when you want to achieve it, and the same goes for your chatbot. By implementing a chatbot into your marketing campaign, it's important to have a vision for it. Know which part of your campaign you want your chatbot to focus on and design it once you have these measurable goals in mind.

Related:Enterprise Chatbots Platforms and the Future of Work

To capitalize on the use of a chatbot as part of your marketing campaign, you need to know who it will be communicating with. Get to know your audience so that your chatbot can establish the best tone of voice, which products to push, and of course, where to interact with them. Your virtual assistant can draw information from social media profiles, browsing habits, and other sources to then to provide tailored ads that speak to each customer.

Chatbots can track user data, so you should be collecting as much information as possible. Not only will it allow you to improve its performance, but also improve your marketing campaign as a whole. With the information your chatbot collects, you can identify common problems customers are facing and fix them to boost your interactions and sales.

Related:Enterprise Chatbots and the Conversational Commerce Revolutionizing Business

Many businesses have a reactive approach to customer engagement. In other words, they wait for a customer to start a conversation with them. Make sure your audience knows that your chatbot is available to help by sending a quick 'Hello' message as soon as they land on your website or social media pages. They'll be more likely to engage with it in the future, thus enabling you to gather more data.

Traditional advertising and hard-selling methods no longer work like they use to. With that in mind, you have to have more of an inbound marketing approach. Simply put, you need to have a "customer comes first" mentality.

Your chatbot should be designed with the aim of fulfilling a specific duty that will be valuable to your audience. Instead of packing it with a variety of glitchy features, deliver one flawless function at a time and make its abilities clear to each user it interacts with in order to set expectations.

If you create a chatbot that is unable to undertake one task, this will leave customers with a poor impression of your brand. Be sure to align your chatbots functionalities with your marketing campaign's goals.

Related:How to Create a Facebook Messenger Chatbot For Free Without Coding

While you don't want your chatbot to come off rude or abrasive, giving it a level of personality is recommended. Train it to reflect your brand's vision and tone of voice. Make sure this personality aligns with your target audience and, of course, the industry in which you are operating. For example, if you want to implement a chatbot into your football marketing campaign, it would not have the same tone of voice as one designed for a banking firm.

One of the best and most practical features that modern chatbots can offer is the delivery of on demand personalized promotions and offers to consumers. By gathering data from social media profiles and past interactions, chatbots can learn about consumer behaviors, shopping preferences, and more.

Related:Make Chats WithChatbotsWork

To create an effective chatbot for your marketing campaign, you first need to establish your buyer personas. From there, your chatbot can reach out to your potential customers in real time and qualify them automatically to provide you with high-quality leads. The chatbot you implement for your marketing campaign can work closely with your sales team, nurturing your leads as they go through their buyer journey, eventually leading them onto your sales department.

Every time your chatbot has an interaction where it answers questions about products or services, or even gives shopping advice, it should be able to offer an upgrade, insights into new products, or information on products that could complement their current choices based on the user's shopping preferences. By doing so, your chatbot will also become an upselling and cross-selling tool that will help you generate more sales.

Related:The How-To: UsingChatbotsAs A Tool For Customer Service

Chatbots aren't going anywhere anytime soon and to stay ahead of your competition and increase sales, it is important that you implement yours where it is likely to offer the most value to your customers. Follow the steps I outlined above to create a chatbot that can help increase awareness of your marketing campaign and help you make more sales.

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Instead of Staffing Up For Your Marketing Campaign, Build A Chatbot. - Entrepreneur