With any emerging marketing channel, it takes time for the stakeholders in your business to recongize it’s value. Social Media is one such channel. As a marketer, you recognize it’s value but how do you convey this to stakeholders who are responsible for your bottom line?

Know your budget constraints:

If you are prepared to discuss the financial and personnel resources required for a social media strategy, you will look educated and more credible when stating your case to stakeholders.

Here is a list of common items to budget for when planning your social media campaign:
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Whenever I share at a social gathering that I design Internet Marketing campaigns, people stop whatever they were talking about with “I have a friend that owns their own business and they want to do this Internet Marketing thing. Would you mind talking with them? Oh, they can’t really pay anything, but I’d really appreciate it.”

And so began my quest for a way to help out my acquaintances without going broke providing one-on-one training. After numerous days of going back through my marketing presentations on Twitter, Facebook and other social network platforms, the outlines for a series of informative posts which I call “Top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies for Beginners” began to take shape.

Why create a series on using the Internet for marketing especially for beginners? To start, the social media and Internet Marketing medium is changing so fast, that someone casually looking for easy tips on how to begin Internet Marketing can easily find information that was relevant just a month ago, but no longer applies to today’s fast-moving market. And the amount of information that exists in this domain is so vast, that the person who really wants to focus on their business can easily be overwhelmed.

All of which brings us back to the series. I will provide some analysis, some insight and hopefully some thought paths to get things started so if you are a business owner, you can begin formulating your own strategies which apply to your business, not the one next door. Check back in this space for the first post in my series “Top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies “.

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The latest technology capturing the public’s eye is “Augmented Reality” (AR), coming soon to a device near you. In essence, it overlays digital information onto a web-connected display. A fun example of this technology is Georgia Tech’s zombie shooter “ARhrrr” in which a mobile device’s camera is pointed at a printed map. Using the special markers on the map and software downloaded to the mobile device, a fully functional video game is overlaid in 3-D on top of the map, in which the object is to shoot zombies.

All well and good, but the savvy marketer will recognize the the opportunity to converge digital information with physical presence. How about projecting “For Sale” information to iPhone users pointing their camera towards a house in a new development? Or allowing mobile users at a conference to point their camera at a name tag and see the wearer’s LinkedIn page?

We are only at the beginning of the process of converging Internet Marketing with the physical world. As more mobile devices support the required software, we could be looking at the start of a golden age in Internet Marketing. At RTP Designs, we are always looking to create unique and compelling experiences that excite people. What AR application would you like to see?

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When educating new or current clients on the benefits of social media I often hear “I don’t get Twitter” or “How can Twitter help our business?” After spending some time on the subject, I get most of the point across, but there are still some suspicions present.A case study or real world example always helps, so I am going to share an experience I had with a company that has begun to utilize Twitter to reach out to their customers.

I use @Task, a web based project management tool to keep track of client accounts. While viewing a webinar a couple weeks ago, I logged into my @Task account to check on a few things (yes, I multitask). My Gant Chart screen was acting a little flaky so I sent out a Tweet to see if any of my followers were having the same issue:

I did not get much of a response from my followers, which I expected. What I didn’t expect was to have an @Task representative call me within 3 minutes!

Unfortunately, I was not answering my phone due to my webinar participation but I still appreciated the prompt follow up and concern nevertheless.

The issue ended up being my browser’s fault, not @Task’s.

I even received a follow up Tweet from their Twitter account administrator making sure the problem had been rectified:

That was the icing on the cake. The whole experience made me feel like a valued customer, even though the firm I work for is small compared to many of their clients.

There you have it: real world proof that Twitter is good for your brand and your customers.

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As the paradigm of advertising and reader engagement has shifted to the internet, we have seen the fall of many well known print properties such as Vibe and the Seattle Post Intelligencer.  Today, the iconic Readers Digest has announced plans to file for bankruptcy. According to the Wall Street Journal, the publication has “reached an agreement with its lenders on a restructuring plan that it will likely complete under a prepackaged bankruptcy filing in order to reduce its debt.”

The agreement will keep the widely circulated publication alive for now, but the fact that a change in order for them to stay profitable remains.  Unlike other struggling print media, Readers Digest has not truly implemented a more digitally focused approach.

Events like this continue to show the impact online activity has on print media. What does it mean for your business? Consider allocating more of your ad spend to the Internet before your competitors catch on, because when they do, those ad spots will become more costly.

Contact us to learn how we can taking your advertising to the Internet.

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The Seattle Post Intelligencer ran it’s last print edition last week.  Now the 146 year old publication will be serving up  content exclusively on the web.  This is a common trend with Newspapers across the country who are struggling to make money with print.

Is this a sad time? No, not really. It is just another evolution in the media industry. Younger generations are immersed in the internet just about daily and older generations are starting to catch on. In our fast paced digital society, subscribing to your favorite content and viewing it on your mobile device is beginning to take the place of walking to the mailbox with your morning coffee and robe. I, personally do not have one magazine or newspaper subscription.

“I think digital publishing’s absolutely the trend,” said Robert Grimshaw, publisher and managing director of FT.com, the Web site for the Financial Times. “Everything ultimately follows the consumer, and everybody is going online, so publishers have to be comfortable with operating in a different environment.”

According to the Magazine Publishers of America, the number of unique visitors to consumer magazine Web sites for the first quarter of 2008 averaged around 70.7 million unique users per month, a new record. In fact, online readership is rising at twice the rate of the general Internet audience.

MediaNews Group has been using digital to focus on its niche audiences such as lifestyle groups and specific communities. It is segmenting e-mails to reach special interests groups and, by adding more niche newsletters, it adds more ad inventory targeted to a specific audience. For example, Denver has many pet owners and dog lovers, so it has created a newsletter that targets this audience.

In the end, I think that newspapers with digital presences will be able to offer more to advertisers. Digital marketing offers more targeting capabilities and metrics than newspaper ever has.

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