What is Your Flavor of Ice Cream?

2010-03-07T15:53:00.254Z

If you like 'Farming' and 'Cooking' online but still feel yourself a little bit old-fashioned in the Web 2.0 age, let me tell you two stories and you'll be impressed by how up-to-date you are and how influencial you can be.

1. The Hostel Booking Story

One day John traveled to a new place and wanted to find a hostel. So he asked for recommendations on Twitter by mobile. Coincidently two local friends suggested him the same hostel, and before he made the decision, that hostel had already sent him the directions, current hospitality and availability on Twitter, whereas John was happy to choose it and got settled down quickly.

That's how real time service works. The hostel applied easy tools to track comments that related to its name or website, so as to provide instant service to any potential customer.

On the other hand, it is said that people might tell one friend about a pleasant experience while telling 10 friends about the bad thing happend to him. Imagine if John encountered bad service or dirty duvet in the hostel, he probably would share his unhappiness with more friends not only via Twitter on phone but also on travel rating systems, his blog and other social networks before he ever thought of making a formal complaint to the hostel's customer service manager.

With the word of mouth becoming 'world' of mouth, the social media has put another 'crown' on the customers' head. The truth is that peer recommendation is far more important than costly advertisements. And when customer service evloves to the form of one-to-one communication, news and products will come to knock on your door. And they never dare treat you badly before, during and after purchase in case of losing TRUST of their brand in a flash.

2. The Icecream Story

Still confused about 'Social Media' as an ambiguous jargon? The town of 'Scoopville' will tell you how simply it works.

Now you know what an expert you already are in Social Media.

Here's another video with astonishing figures of the Social Network around that you might never realise. Take a breath before you click it.

It is Time To Make Yourself Heard

2010-03-06T20:50:00.010Z

Inspiration of the Blog

It is said that everything occurs with a string of reasons. If it was not my well-performed but unaccepted final assessment in PwC London, not my random action of joining the E-marketing association at LinkedIn, not my curiosity to travel over 3 hours by train to Brighton for the Wired Sussex Workshop, there would be no chance for me to experience the cutting-edge media industry, inspired by these excellent digital-marketing executives who lit up my enthusiasm and helped dot the beatiful line for the potential CAREER that I'm really interested into.

How much do you know about Online Marketing?

With nearly a full hand-written notebook so far, the exploring of online marketing is still relentless, from strategy implemention, useful measurement tools, technic & toptips to successful case studies.

In general, Web 2.0 Marketing consists of

1) SEO - Search Engine Optimisation (natural search)
The higher your website ranks in the search engine result page (SERP), the easier you'll be found by others.

2) PPC - Pay Per Click Advertisments(paid search)
Certain rate of costs will occur everytime your ads is clicked. A common and effective way to boost your traffic.

3) Email Marketing
Direct marketing method toward individuals, whereas the web technology make it much easier to reach the target audience, evaluate responses and monitor the effectiveness of the campagin.

4) Social Media
Online interaction based on various platforms mainly including:

Social Network -- Significant online societies (eg. Facebook, Linkedin) for people to contact, communicate, build relationships, share information, form groups of common focus/interests.

Blogs -- Open 'diaries' for individuals or enterprises to display, deliver and update information in the format of articles, pics and videos for others to read, comment and share.

Micro-Blogs -- Mini blogs with maximum 140 characteristics featured for frequent and live update via internet and mobile facilities. (eg. Twitter)

Multimedia displays -- Conveniet web servers for people to share different format of contents such as Flickr for photo albums and Youtube for video clips.

Planting the Tree at the Age of Branding

When customers' thoughts are racing with technology, you can hardly image how important the 'Brand' is toward anyone at every minute. It's the golden time to make yourself heard no matter whether you are an enterprise or simply an individual with ideas as I am :)

This basic overview of digital marketing is like a tip of the iceberg even from my notebook. Blogging really helps me to think and to extend the knowledge a lot further. Same as online marketing, a process described as fostering a tree, where constant effort should be a must.

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

What is Your Flavor of Ice Cream?

It is Time To Make Yourself Heard