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Digital Marketing Tip of the Month
What You Should Have Read
Hot Off the Desk of CMT
Shock Factor
CMT News
Website usability, or the ease at which your visitors can interact with your website, is an important part of digital marketing.
Because successful online marketing doesn't end when a user enters your website—it ends when the user completes a sale or other desired action. This is something that absolutely won't happen if a person has to wait too long for your website to load. In today's world, we all want information now, now, now, and having to wait just isn't an option. Make sure your website load time is shorter than 10 seconds to avoid losing possible customers to your competitors.
Our intern, Kyrstin Hewitt, is currently a graduate student at the University of Houston - Clear Lake, majoring in Digital Media Studies. She holds a B.A. in Communication also through UHCL.
She brings a variety of skills to the table such as web design, video, writing, marketing and advertising. Throughout the last year of her undergraduate studies, she worked with The Padgett Group, Houston Modern Luxury and the Russian Cultural Center.
With her help, we are proud to announce the launch of the BOBY - www.theboby.org and hope to soon launch the redesign of Rayburn & Hilliard, DDS!
Because if you had, you'd know that 93% of Americans who use social media want companies to have a presence on these networks, 40.5% of messages on Twitter are "pointless babble" and searching for Jessica Biel may cause some to run yelling "danger Will Robinson!"
According to a study done by Cone, 56 percent of social media users feel a stronger connection with and better served by companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment.
A short-term study by Pear Analytics had Twitter users tweeting up a storm. According to the study, 40.5 percent of messages published on Twitter are "pointless babble", while only 8.7 percent of messages were said to have "value", which was loosely defined as news of interest.
Step aside Brad Pitt. Mcafee Inc. has named Jessica Biel the most dangerous celebrity on the internet. Fans searching for "Jessica Biel", "Jessica Biel downloads," "Jessica Biel wallpaper," and a host of other related keywords with the name "Jessica Biel" have a one in five chance of landing at a website that's tested positive for online threats such as spyware, adware, spam, phishing, viruses, and other malware.
Social Media Etiquette
Everyone is talking about how to be successful on Twitter. Social media marketing experts are coming out of the walls to give advice such as "you have to build up your followers by following others", "don't just tweet about your company" and "put some personality into your posts." And that's good advice. But the hottest thing to cross my desk today just reminded me that social media is constantly growing and changing. The rules are: “there are no rules." And every once in a while someone will put up something so different, so off the wall and so "true" that hundreds of thousands of people flock to follow that person. And end up laughing until they cry or wet their pants (I will admit to the latter, I plead the fifth on the former).
Last night (last night as of writing this), I found this Twitter account. And when I went back to look at it again (who could resist) I noticed that the followers had increased by 20,000. And they are continuing to rise.
Is the content all appropriate? No. Is this a Twitter account everyone will find funny? No. Should a business retweet this stuff? Absolutely not. But I'll be dog-gone if it isn't good. This is a true piece of viral marketing, and whether you find "Justin's" dad hilarious or not, there are a few things that every marketer should take away from this Twitter profile.
The first is that it's fun to read. In just 39 posts, "Justin" has shown us the kind of content a follower can expect to read in his updates. He's set the tone early on, and each post is a 140-character or less glimpse into what can only be conceived as one of the most humorous men on the planet. In other words, it's entertaining. That can be something we forget as businesses. We are trying so hard to say just the right thing, to keep that safe balance between promotional and informative, that we forget that we need to offer people something they want to read. And will keep coming back to again and again. It doesn't have to be outrageous, but it does need to be worth posting. A general rule of thumb should be that if you don't want to read it yourself on someone else's Twitter account, you probably shouldn't post that tweet as is.
Now, I'm the first to admit that this isn't always possible. But if one man could amass 20,000 followers in just a few hours doing exactly that, isn't it worth a shot?
The other lesson that can be learned from this Twitter account lies in the power of the retweet. To date, I count 39 tweets on this user's profile. Yet I count 340,489 followers and only 1 person that "Justin" is following. At first glance, this just doesn't add up. But when I added the Twitter account to my TweetDeck, I quickly understood.
People like these tweets, and what do you do when you like something? You retweet. This means that all of your followers have a chance to read that exact same tweet. In other words, the number of people exposed to a Twitter account grows exponentially with each retweet.
Give your followers something worthy of a retweet. It will increase your brand exposure and help your business grow.
And if you have a dad with quotes as funny as this guy, all the better. Good luck, and happy tweeting.
(if not more effective) as TV advertising?
When you look beyond the immediate click-through, at the full picture, the answer becomes clear. Display advertising tops TV as a marketing medium to drive sales, showing a considerable sales lift in a much shorter time period than TV advertising
