KEY SECRETS FOR SUCCESS IN ONLINE MARKETING

Online marketing is sometimes known as web-marketing, internet marketing or e-marketing. All these are basically methods to market the products and services of a company over the internet.

Editor's Note: This article is a guest post written by Maria Jones. Check her details at the end of this post.

TYPES OF ONLINE MARKETING

•  Advertisements: to increase traffic on your company websites you can make use of banner ads to be placed on a third party site 
• Search engine marketing: the site is being promoted though paid for advertising on a search engine
• Search engine optimization: this helps in improving the visibility of your web page to achieve higher visibility on the results page of a search engine 
• Social media: grab the attention of various people across the world by adding advertisements on social networking sites 
• Video marketing: this is a process to promote your ideas and guidelines through videos 

TIPS TO ATTAIN SUCCESS IN THE ONLINE MARKET

•  Web page: Initially look for the landing page. These are not developed for selling but are designed to post your companies perspective or objectives. It generally deals with your company name, address, and email. It should be creative and efficient in providing your present outlook. 
• Content: As content is the king for any website to reach its full potential. Make a point to produce an article which is simple and relevant to your product. Videos will also play a good role in reaching the customers minds. The communication in videos should appear as though you’re directly talking to the customer and explaining your views in an understandable language. Make sure the content across your site is easy to read and relevant. Keep it concise as people will generally skim read online. Highlight important points in a bolder typeface to grab the user’s attention. 
• Social networking sites: Marketing through networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube provides you with a way to reach your target customers in a faster and easier way. On developing a business; create an account in such sites and get interacted with different friends and followers to promote your business perspectives. 
• Finance: For any business to run successfully it will require initial working capital. This capital can be gained by applying for a angel investments or venture capital loans. For a small scale business one can enhance initial investments with short term loans or long term loans business loans. If incurred with sudden emergencies for instant cash you can make use of a payday loan. These payday loans provide you with instant cash which can be used in an emergency. They have a very short application process and the money usually available to you in 24 hours. 

Author Bio: I am Maria Jones from USA. I'm into Finance and Online Marketing who had experience in writing quality guest posts. Catch me twitter.com/financeport

[Infographic] Facebook Reaches 488 Million Mobile Users

About fifty percent (50%) of the total Facebook users have the Facebook mobile app installed in their phones according to the recent IPO (Initial Public Offering) filing of Facebook company, showing that their mobile application has reached an outstanding 488 million users across the globe, with United States recorded to be the top country of the mobile app and Nigeria recorded to have the highest Facebook mobile penetration at 81.2%. 

The infographic below courtesy of SocialBakers show the current statistics of the facebook mobile application across all platforms, the top 10 countries with the highest Facebook mobile app users and the top countries with highest penetration of the said mobile app based on the recently submitted IPO of Facebook.

LinkedIn Acquires SlideShare for $119 Million in Cash and Stock

Professional content sharing platform, SlideShare, has been acquired by the social networking company, LinkedIn, for $119 Million in cash and stock.

The strategic acquisition of the said platform will help LinkedIn  gather more momentum in the social media space and help the company establish a stronger network for professionals since SlideShare provides services that are business-related and intended for professionals.

"Now that content can be shared, uploaded, viewed amongst liked minded individuals, LinkedIn will be the strongest social media network for professionals," said Audrey William, Head of ICT Research for Frost & Sullivan Australia & New Zealand.

LinkedIn has doubled its shares since initial public offering on May 2011 with site members also dramatically increased from 150 million in Q4 to 160 million. The company is even more striving to maintain such a unique position as not all companies has the same business model as LinkedIn.

Related: LINKEDIN REACHED 1 MILLION FILIPINO USERS

Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn CEO,  is pushing mobile technology to seek professionals stay in-touch with their subscription services and attract advertisers who want to reach their growing user base.

"The company has in recent years done quite a few amazing things to its portal including allowing for twitter feeds to be sent via LinkedIn and that itself has brought about a lot of discussion amongst professionals," said William. Further, LinkedIn "will become an attractive platform for advertising and recruitment and will be the ‘Facebook’ of the professional networking world," she said.

LinkedIn as a business-related social networking platform offers services where the company is effectively getting revenues such as premium membership, advertising and recruitment fees.

[INFOGRAPHIC] Social Media Usage in the Philippines

Philippines is one of the countries today that has the most active people in the online world. Each year, the number of Filipinos who are using the internet is continually increasing. From 24 million (or equivalent to 24.5% of Philippines's total population) internet users in 2009, it rose 6% to mark 29.7 million or 29.7% of the total population in 2010. As of 2011, there are approximately 29 million (29.2%) internet users out of 104 million of the total Philippine population, 3.7 million of which are active internet users (Maybe that include me).

Filipinos' online presence primarily involve the use of social media platforms particularly facebook, twitter and youtube, blogging activities and searching information in the web. The  engagement to different social media platforms has continued to shape values and culture of the Filipinos that made them to become known in the world as the social networking capital. Social media sites become an avenue for every Filipinos from different parts of the globe connect one another. Likewise, it has become the primary source of online entertainment and markets for every small and medium business in the Philippines.

The infographic, social media usage in the Philippines below shows recent figures of the Filipino population from top social media platforms today. The infographic also shows the social media highlights which conjecture the challenges every Filipinos in the online community are going to face this year and maybe even in the next coming years.

Twitter 3.0 for Blackberry Download

More blackberry users can now enjoy and stay connected with the people they care about on Twitter as another Twitter App for Blackberry phones has been released, dated April 2, 2012.

Developed by Research In Motion Limited, Twitter 3.0 is another version of  Twitter app that is designed for   Blackberry devices running software under version 5.0 or later. That include devices starting BlackBerry 9981 to BlackBerry 8100.

One of the major updates or feature that has been added in this version is that it now offers an even greater social experience through deep integration with BBM™. As a BBM-connected application, you can share your latest Tweet as your BBM Personal Message.

The twitter 3.0 app is available for download across all countries around the world except China. Scan now the QR code below to download Twitter 3.0  for Blackberry or click this download link.

Twitter 3.0 for Blackberry

Instructions for Scanning QR Code

1. Open the BlackBerry App World app on your smartphone.
2. Click the Menu key and select Scan a Barcode.
3. Click Start Scanning. Point your Blackberry smartphone camera at the barcode image and hold the camera steady for 3 seconds to scan it. BlackBerry App World will instantly find the app you've selected.

Pope Benedict XVI to Join Twitter

Pope Benedict XVI will join the micro blogging and social networking site Twitter to communicate and reach more catholics, as announced by a Vatican official although there is no date revealed yet as to when the account will be activated and officially start tweeting.

Image Courtesy of The Guardian

Head of the Vatican's pontifical council for social communications, Father Claudio Maria Celli said that Pope's tweets can be reformulated, redistributed, relaunched and disseminated. Moreover, the Father said, "In this sense it is like the gospel, a small mustard seed that once scattered grows into bushes where birds can rest."

The Vatican is not actually new to using the internet in reaching its people and spreading the gospels of God. It may be remembered that the first Pope has launched a YouTube channel in 2009 and encouraged priests around the world to also engage in blogging and use social media sites in communicating with congregants along with the existing means of communication.

Pope followers though should expect that not all tweets to be published will always come from the Pope himself but all tweets will undergo his approval.

Update: I searched Pope Benedict XVI on twitter and here are the results:

Infographic: The Sad State Of Social Media Privacy

Aside from allowing people to connect from one another, building a safe, robust community over the web, another big responsibilty of social media providers is to give users barrier against outside parties that may be benefited of the information they share.

This is where the Privacy Policy comes in. Privacy policy is a statement or a legal document that discloses some or all of the ways a party gathers, uses, discloses and manages a customer or client's data. Personal information can be anything that can be used to identify an individual, not limited to but including; name, address, date of birth, marital status, contact information, ID issue and expiry date, financial records, credit information, medical history, where you travel, and intentions to acquire goods and services. (Wikipedia - Privacy Policy). Every website that collect information from users is required to declare privacy policies for the very purpose of letting the users know what particular information they collect and for what purpose these information are intended to be used.

Sadly, having these privacy policies taking in effect are "easier said than done" because of the factors like (1) users have lack of control over their privacy, (2) government's implementation of laws regarding user privacy are not really strong enough to protect the users and (3) most of the users just don't know the importance of privacy policy.

The MDG's recenlty published infographic shows these factors that took social media privacy into the most sad state. Right click the image below and select view image to view in full size.

Infographic by MDG Advertising

Who Are The Most Active Social Networkers?

The picture you've just seen above already gives you hint to answer the title of this article. That's right! Women are nonetheless the most active social networkers as of today!

On a latest study reported, females ages 18-34 years old are the most engaged in social networking and which make up the majority of visitors to social networks and blogs. Aged 35-49 are also avid visitors: 4 percent are more likely than average to visit social networks and blogs than they do in any other site and 27 percent of these sites’ audience. The next paragraphs will get you into details about them.

Related: The Rise Of Mobile Social Media Use

These women are likely came from New England as the report suggests, with an average of 102 unique women who visit social networking sites and blogs. Not so far behind are women from South Atlantic and East South Central both has the same figure of average of 101 visitors who are also active in social networking. Women from Pacific and both of East and West North Central though are the third visitors likely to land on the sites mentioned.

As mentioned earlier, these active women who engage a lot in social networking are between ages 18-34 years old which has an average of 108 visitors. They are educated,  highly reputable women as the study indicates that these women has attained a bachelor's degree or even post graduate degree. There is no report on what particular field these women are into but I would like to think that they are involved in either SEO, content management, technical support or BPO or even testers. 

In terms of ethnicity, Asian/Pacific Islander women are the most active social networkers. About 103 in average of social networking and blog sites visitors are Asian while an average of 102 are either American Indian or Alaska Native. White and Hispanic women are also active with an average of 101 and 100 unique visitors respectively.

Indeed, women conquers social networking! To show this, here is a picture showing how women are active and even influential to both men and women online. Britney Spears is the most circled people in Google+ only followed by four other powerful and popular men despite the fact that the current percentage of gender who use Google+ is 69.0% men and 29.8% women.

The Rise Of Mobile Social Media Use

Year 2011 has been dominating for smartphones and tablets. In fact, more than half of all mobile phone sales are occupied by smartphones already. It is the year where consumers sought and realized that the use of these devices can bring yet another effective and convenient way of computing.

Powerful mobile OS (Operating Systems), highly interactive and useful applications, increased phone memory and the ever-powered storage over the cloud which allowed users flexibility to access files wherever, whenever! These are only among of a hundred reasons why smartphones and tablets are overtaking feature phones.

Related: Top Social Networking And Blogging Sites Of 2011

MOBILE SOCIAL MEDIA USE IS ON THE RISE

Whether it is a feature phone or a smartphone, the ability to access social media is a commonly used feature among mobile owners. About 43 percent of users access the web through mobile device such as mobile phones, iPad, e-reader and handheld music player. In the figure below, the 97 percent for computer use only suggests that still, computer is the most convenient way to use and access social media contents.

How do consumers access social media (Source:Nielsen)

SMARTPHONE FEATURES AND HOW USERS HAVE VALUED THEM

With wide capability ranging from the basics of making and receiving calls to checking out different places nearby down to mobile payment transactions and updating social status and news feeds plus the practicality of use over other devices, smartphones continue to be the most preferred gadget. The next figure below lists down the features commonly available in a smartphone device and how these features have valued by users.

While downloading and playing music is the most available feature for smartphones and global positioning system (GPS) is the most valued feature, applications for social networking has been the second available and most valued feature.

How does social networking compare to other features consumers have on
their phones? And what features do they value most?

MOST USED APPS FOR SMARTPHONE USERS

The on-the-rise popularity of smartphones and tablets which allow users install a wide variety of applications also made it possible for mobile social networking apps to be the third most downloaded app and used by smartphone owners. The most popular app for social networking across all operating system is Facebook  while Twitter is the number five most used app on Blackberry and Windows mobile operating systems.

Gaming apps (the most popular of which include Angry birds, Fruit Ninja and Tiny Tower) are still the most downloaded and used applications for smartphones While Weather applications are also highly in demand. Other categories for the most downloaded and used applications by smartphones users include music (Google Music is the most popular) , news, entertainment, banking/finance and dining/restaurant.

Top 10 Categories of Apps Used by Smartphones Owners Who Downloaded Apps

USERS WHO ENGAGED IN MOBILE SOCIAL NETWORKING

As teeny as thirteen (13) and eldest as fifty five and over (55+) years of age have installed apps for mobile social networking. The most highly downloaded app of which is Facebook followed by twitter with LinkedIn, a site preferrable for professionals, as the least most downloaded app. Ages twenty five to thirty four (25 - 34) have the highest percentage of social networking app users.

Percentage of Social Networking App Users by Age