Emilia Akulenko's Weblog

PR in Social Media

emiliaakulenko — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 15:36:54 +0000

Social Media became a major platform for Public Relation activities. We can estimate 5 important steps for PR manager:

1. Identify the goal of the company: the objective of the PR-campaign is a fundamental factor in determining the tools as well as social media sites.

Goals of the company can be:
- Niche branding
- Stimulation of sales
- Socio-oriented image
- Increase of occurrence in online media
- Creating a community of loyal users
- Establish an effective feedback from audiences
- Attracting targeted traffic
- Distribution of news on the Internet

2. The principle of “mutual exchange”. Effective PR in social networks requires close interaction with the audience and interaction, where both parties are satisfied. The reader will be happy with the message if he/she will get something in the return.

3. Be honest with audience. To build honest relationships with the audience. Feature of social networks is that users are very sensitive to any manifestation of insincerity. Anyone who suspects a trick, can immediately share this information with others. As a result, PR-campaign may give the opposite effect.

4. Keep distance at first. No familiarity. What is a community? It is a work team with its laws, foundations, traditions and folklore. Stranger, has a chance to become a full participant in the community only if he has a respect to these laws.

5. Clearly define the criteria of efficiency. PR-campaign can not be go good, bad or normal. It is just a subjective assessment of the overall bracket. In order to determine the effectiveness of the campaign, the criteria has to be defined for success:
- The number of advertising contacts: the approximate number of users who see the campaign materials.
- Number of publications in high-quality sources: RSS-aggregators, article directories, as well as Spam blog to quality sources do not.
- Number of entries (comments) on the publication: The indicator shows the level of interest of users to the information published.
- Ratio of positive / neutral / negative feedback
- Number of links to site / blog: there are references obtained as a result of the campaign.
- Number of subscribers to blog, fun pages etc.
- Number of participants to create a community.
- Number of visitors to the site / blog

Internet is the medium of today and tomorrow

emiliaakulenko — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:33:48 +0000

Use of the Internet for business marketers is a reality. Television, print, newspaper, and other traditional marketing avenues will continue to be used but these who ignore the Internet will lose the race for competitive advantage. Those who have embraced the Internet have demonstrated its power and are innovators.

Marketing on the Internet is a new business channel, yet in many way it remains the same as traditional marketing, but companies need to learn what works on Web sites, how to communicate their message and how to differentiate their Web sites.

Due to its structure and capabilities, the Internet is the medium of today and tomorrow. Thus, more and more people connect and join the “cyberworld” as a new media, new distribution channel, new opportunity, new source of business.

The demand of it emerged and developed new tools, such as internet marketing, affiliate marketing, conversational marketing, viral marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, AdSence and AdWord techniques which are implemented today by many of companies who do care about their future and about their reputation.

More than a revolution, cybermarketing incorporates many changes induced by information technology on marketing. It does not replace traditional marketing, but adds features and new opportunities now available and ubiquitous tomorrow. Indeed, the various media (TV, radio, newspapers) converge, through the digitization of information to the future information superhighways. Thanks to its, there are many possibilities. The Internet provides a tremendous support and allows the cybermarketing preparation of the information services of tomorrow.

The implementation of an Internet project in a company now requires a prior appraisal. Indeed, if the connection is simple and economical, the creation, promotion and maintenance of a site require trendy and ongoing knowledge of the Internet market and the needs of users.

The Internet gives business a better way to do things they do. The Internet capability to cut costs for selling and buying organizations. Automated functions and instant data information can cut purchasing cycle times, reduce human resources costs, and lower transaction costs for suppliers.

Further to cost reduction, there is increased efficiency. Online functions for customer service, product information, product ordering are available to customer 24 hour a day every day of the year. These are value-added services that serve to differentiate the products they compliment.

Increasingly through innovative outside relationships, organizations are aggressively reshaping themselves and fundamentally changing the way they do marketing. Unprecedented levels of performance and profitability have resulted from these efforts. The bottom line is that the Internet has became one of today’s most powerful, organization-shaping management strategies.

Global competition has intensified with the introduction of new technologies. Those who can exploit the opportunities of this new technology will win. Cybermarketing enables a large company to be responsive, representative, innovative, and fast and a small company to compete internationally. Information technology changes on a month-to-month basis and sometimes week to week. The pace of change is accelerating. To remain competitive, companies must position themselves and commence marketing on the Internet, cybermarketing.

Cybermarketing

emiliaakulenko — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 11:32:59 +0000

“It is the combination of direct marketing
principles with Internet technology in order to
find profitable customers and interact with them
to find out how they want to do business, when
they want to do it, and under what terms.”
EC-Concil

The Internet is no longer new. But the use of it in terms of business have been changed and recent. Most firms use it as an indispensable communication tool. It is an established focus on advertising spending. It is the biggest growing channel for sales and investment in any marketplace. Many big players moved from “real world” to online one. Internet technology has been developed an extraordinary way for the past decade. The number of internet users has risen exponentially and according to a interworldstats reached 1,5 billion worldwide in 2009.

The term “Cybermarketing” for the first time has been utilized in 1995 by Len Keeler in his book “Cybermarketing”. He defines the cyber prefix in its application to marketing, and more, as a meeting point for the world of computers and communications. Most of us would define marketing as whatever you do to promote the growth of your business. It can include market research, publicity, advertising, sales, merchandizing and distribution, and customer service and support.

“Computer theorists use the term cyberspace to refer to the notional social arena we enter when using computers to communicate. Cyberspace can be used more generally to refer to the potential lifeway or general type of culture being created via Advanced Information Technology (AIT)”, the congeries of artifacts, practices, and relationships coming together around computing” (Hakken, 1999, p. 1). Ethnographer Hakken, in his book Cyborgs @ Cyberspace (1999), sees the cyber prefix, and the word cyberspace, as representing a culture. “The new computer-based ways of processing information seem to come with a new social formation, or, in traditional anthropological parlance, cyberspace is a distinct type of culture” (Hakken, 1999, p.2).

Cybermarketing has become an indispensable segment of e-commerce as well as the internet and World Wide Web related topics. Cyber marketing simply refers to a technique of attracting potential customers by advertising your products or services through such means as websites, emails,banners, blogs and many different ways that internet provides.   In other words, cybermarketing is a blend of internet technology and direct marketing principles that is adopted by business owners to find profitable customers and to interact with them in order to enhance their business activities, thereby ensuring improved ROI (Return on Investment.) A number of activities are involved in cyber marketing such as internet marketing, affiliate marketing, viral marketing, conversational marketing, social media marketing and google search.

Cybermarketing can take many forms as well as simple advertisements on websites. It can also be exploited through the use of email, individualized websites for the company or also via communication devices such as mobile phones. To bring in some academic theories, it is the combination of the internet and the use of direct marketing.

An advantage that is born of cyber marketing is the notion of interactivity. It means that the producer of the product, service or public service can communicate through the internet effectively and leave a lasting impression in the consumer’s mind.

Benefits derived from the adoption of cybermarketing techniques are immense. First of all, it enables to minimize business costs and helps to reach a substantial number of customers and that too within minimal time frame.

Another great benefit of cybermarketing is that it allows firms to cost-effectively reach in any type market, let it be regional, national, and international.

“The requirements of effective communications and persuasion are fixed and do not vary
from country to country. The specific advertising message and media strategy must often
be changed from region to region and must frequently be adapted from country to
country to correspond with the requirements for effective communication and persuasion
in the particular region or country” (Keegan, 1989, p.496).

Also, a significant benefit of cyber marketing is that it enables to win profitable customers. Exceptionally low marketing costs, high profit margin, increased customer loyalty, round the clock services, and expansion in customer base are the other obvious benefits of cyber marketing.

With the internet becoming an ever larger part of modern life, expert more companies and businesses to begin exploiting it, with new updates in cyber marketing news becoming the norm.

Viral Marketing Outcomes

emiliaakulenko — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 13:38:37 +0000

In the process of examining the outcomes there are two opposing sides who says viral marketing cannot be controlled and those that disagrees. First group who disagree think that viral marketing can be controlled, the others say no.

According Joseph Carrabis,

“The completely controllable part of viral marketing is based on mathematics and deals with the following questions:”

How many individuals does the campaign need to start with (seed)?
How fast will the campaign spread (propagation factor)?
How will the campaign spread (vectors)?
How large a group is required to sustain the propagation (viral burden)?
What is the campaign’s goal (maintenance factor)?
How large a group is required to sustain the campaign once the goal is achieved (threshold point)?
At what point is the campaign too successful (saturation point)?

He also developed his own theory the Meskauskas-Carrabis Effect or MCE as a phenomenon wherein Jim Meskauskas four necessary elements for viral marketing campaign and his trust and fair-exchange concept of B2C could be predictable and probabilistic if the right tools to determine audience-to-message match and related factors are used.

The four elements by Jim are:

Entertainment
Utility
Palpable Reward
Uniqueness

If the viral marketing is controllable, marketers have to do the following:

Start in the end (outcomes/goals) and work it back to the beginning.
Have precise descriptions of all the situations.
Look back from the goal

In the viral marketing there are 3 main roles:

Companies as advertisers whose role in distribution of their product, put on the first line the importance of gaining brand awareness.
Developers as publishers who create the medium of advertisements for the advertisers.
Ordinary people as consumers who is emotionally affected by the mediums so they spread the word or the medium used via emails, videos, blogs, podcast.

According to the BIGresearch Simultaneous Media Survey, the typical blogger (ordinary people) is:

Male (53.7%)
Average age of 37
Slightly lower than average income ($55,819 vs. $56,811)
Better than average education (14.3 years of education vs. 14.2)
Ethnically (69,70% caucasian, 20% hispanic, 12,20% african american, 3,70% asian)

Make your message reachable by the targeted audience…

Old school marketing techniques

emiliaakulenko — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:30:37 +0000

There are some old school marketing techniques that still works:

● Press Releases

When it used to be really read by the press, it was appropriate to call it a press release. Now it might be called as a news broadcast. Also, if you focus on a niche or use the more expensive services you may still hit some great media outlets.

● Email

Way more attention seems to be given to social media than email marketing. However, email marketing will still generate a lot more money for you.

● SEO

Search Engine Optimization is not the new hot thing, but if there is one area that is actually using social media well, it is the people that get how SEO and Social Media tie in together. The key with SEO is that if you are in a tight target niche with little competition, you can probably pay for a one time project and reap the rewards for a long time. If you are in an even slightly competitive market, you need someone that goes to war on your behalf every month to increase ranking and get more pages indexed.

● Old Websites

These old sites have great credibility in the eyes of search engines and can be ignited by a good search engine specialist.

● Directories

Things like directories seem out of date, but getting listed in a good directory still gives you a valuable back-link and can generate a steady (if not huge) stream of traffic, like technorati and blogcatalog.

● Link Exchanges

These things have a bad name, and anything that automates the process. However, doing an occasional link exchange with someone else in your industry will help – not hurt – your website. If link exchanges actually hurt websites, most blogs with blog rolls would be thrown out of Google long ago since they often link to each other.

● Word of Mouth

The oldest of the old school marketing is the new mean. Finding ways to get people to talk about you are the holy grail of cutting through the clutter.

Viral Marketing

emiliaakulenko — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:06:07 +0000

“Viral marketing is based on the belief that marketers, using traditional advertising, can no longer deliver credible messages. Only customers can!”

Keith Bates

Viral marketing is a term used to describe the technique used to increase or to built awareness of a certain advertisement, one’s product or company through self-replicating processes. This technique is more often called “word-of-mouth marketing” because it is only you (as a company) who have to think of a way that your advertisement would encourage people to pass it along.

The term “viral marketing” is also sometimes used pejoratively to refer to stealth marketing campaigns—the use of varied kinds of astroturfing both online and offline to create the impression of spontaneous word of mouth enthusiasm (wikipedia).

Viral Marketing can be applied to any organizations, whether it is profit, non-profit, B2B, consumer product/consumer services companies in order to add viral effects to advertising so that it may achieve significant results in driving traffic to one’s ads. It brings more profitability of sales and increase brand awareness for the advertiser of the ads.

Many different forms of media can be used to reach out to the public without actually promoting a product.

According to eMarketer, the number of a total internet users who are world-of-mouth influenced by 2011 will be increased and will reach 20%.

According to Forrester Research, enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies is rapidly growing and expected to continue this upward trend. With an anticipated compound annual growth rate of 43%, enterprise Web 2.0 spending is expected to reach $4.6 billion globally by the year 2013.

Enterprises use the principles that people pass a product (ebook, video or audio) to friends or family so the brand name is passed automatically, it helps to promote as the products as the company as well.

Viral marketing has became attractive as a mean of advertising due to its low cost. Email sent to a friend with information regarding the interested product will be read not like a spam with the same information. It is claimed that a satisfied customer tells an average of three people about a product or service he/she likes, and eleven people about a product or service which he/she did not like. Viral marketing is based on this natural human behavior.

Viral Marketing is any strategy that encourages individuals to pass to the marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message’s exposure and influence.

Advantages of Viral Marketing:

● Publicity

● Visibility/Promotion

● Drive targeted web traffic to your site

● Earn Credibility

● Link popularity

● Make backend sales

If we look at figures of traditional marketing:

Only 1/3 as effective as 10 years ago
37% is wasted
Redundant
Pushes more people away than it attracts

Most messages today are no longer useful for 3 reasons:

1. Society has changed radically (new forms of advertising)

2. Shorten lifecycle of a product

3. Consumers are

-More Savvy

-More Cynical

-More Selective

-Don’t want to be sold

Six Elements in viral marketing strategy have been identified by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, E-Commerce Consultant:

● Give away products or services

● Provides for effortless transfer to others

● Scales easily from small to very large

● Exploits common motivations and behaviors

● Utilizes existing communication networks

● Takes advantage of others’ resources

The goal of marketers interested in creating successful viral marketing programs is to identify individuals with high Social Networking Potential (SNP) and create Viral Messages that appeal to this segment of the population and have a high probability of being passed along.

Goals of Viral Marketing:

● Email List Development

This is probably the big one. It is easy to integrate and you can get a lot of value in the future from your list.

● Promotion

One of the goal of viral marketing is to make people promote your product in order to increase brand awareness.

● Branding

If your video just went viral, you are probably not getting emails or anything. Hopefully it is strengthening your brand and getting people to go do a search on you.

● Traffic

Your viral marketing item may have all kinds of links back to your site for case studies, instructions, a forum for users, etc. It depends on your product.

● RSS Subscribers or Twitter Followers

If your viral item is interesting, you can encourage other people to follow your twitter or rss to find out about updates and new items.

Applying the Viral Marketing strategy, company will create a network of people visiting its website who are already interested in the company content, products, services.

The keys to viral marketing:

● Know your target market

● Find something about your product, venue, service or organization which will be useful, impactful.

● Interesting and exciting and will create a good user experience. This is your ‘viral agent’.

● Make it easy for people to refer you to others.

● Back up your viral agent with an impactful, user-led, action-creating, well-targeted website.

● Follow up with ways of making it easy for existing customers to refer you online to others.

With good website design, good customer benefits and products and strong embedded calls to action, company has the opportunity to convert a good percentage of its new visitors into customers.

The value of viral marketing is that it increases your exposure to interested potential customers and you can have as many different viral promotions/ campaign as you have different types of customers and their needs.

Shoemania

emiliaakulenko — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:20:35 +0000

On one of the main shopping street, to be precise, 80, Rue du Rhone, you can find the new modern store of a luxury italian shoes and accessories brand. Since September 1st 2008, Shoemania offers you high quality, elite, sometimes extraordinary but at the same time elegant and classical shoes for women, men and children.

It is easy to be astonished by the exposed assortment. Models of CESARE PACIOTTI are mixed with other not less famous italian designers such as CASADEI, MARIO BOLOGNA, SHY, LUCIANO PADOVAN, DSQUARED2, LE SILLA. Even the australian continent is represented by KOOLABURRA .

In an elegant and comfortable 2 stories modern building, in SHOEMANIA’s salon, you can enjoy an aromatic coffee or a glass of champagne while experienced staff will help you to make the best choice of your purchase.

After visiting SHOEMANIA you won’t be only pleased by your exciting selection but also an excellent mood will accompany you during your staying in Geneva.

Being creative…

emiliaakulenko — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:56:03 +0000

Symbolic jewelry has been always an attractive topic for the creative designers. Few of them has successfully demonstrated the uniqueness of the jewelry art and can be proud of produced masterpieces.

Enigma jewels, driven by innovative thinking of Giorgio Bulgari, are seen in an environment characterized by classical inspiration and contaminations from the great Central European cultures of the 1900s. Inspired by this, Enigma brought into the world jewelry series with a strong design identity and with a very exceptional mosaic carpet movement of the art pieces.

Multi symbolism presents in Giorgio Bulgari’s collections. It has been taken the most strong, powerful, self-confident and sensitive representatives such as Lion, Eagle, Heart, Kiss, Man and Woman Faces.

Giorgio Bulgari has a very individual approach to luxury and correspondingly, individual taste, not a price, is the real divide.

The heart of Europe…

emiliaakulenko — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:10:10 +0000

Geneva represents an elegant capital in the heart of Europe, one of the most cosmopolite cities in the world due to the fact that one third of its resident population is formed by foreign citizens. It is a city of exquisite beauty, which remains in the mind of travelers forever.

Geneva is located on the southwestern part of Lake Geneva shoreline, between the Jura mountains and the Alps. Mostly surrounded by French territory, Geneva has been consequently influenced by French culture in many various aspects: mansard roofs, iron balconies, small cafes in the streets and most of all French language.

This glorification territory is famous for its cleanliness, rationality, safe, as well as for a love to adventure and a sense of a high level life-style.

Geneva offers not only a wide selection of banks and a luxury stores but also a great choice in spiritual, cultural and artistic fields. Plenty of museums and historical sites can be found dowtown Geneva.

The most famous picture of the city is embankments with the famous fountain “Jet d’Eau”. This Fountain can be considered the symbol of Geneva, topping up to a height of 145 meters in «the kingdom of the spirit», and it is visible from almost anywhere in the city. Another unique sightseeing of Geneva is the famous floral clock in the English garden. The composition, 5 meters in diameter, is made with 6.5 thousand live flowers and looks differently according with the changing seasons. On a hill, on the left bank of the lake, is spread the Old Town. Every stone of it oozes history: St.-Peter Cathedral, that has been built in XII century, a facade of City Hall in the style of the late Renaissance, the medieval Place du Bourg-de-Four and Place du Molar, The Wall of reformers. The narrow paved streets and colorful courtyards beckon travelers walk away from the bustle of modern cities.

Nowadays Geneva can be considered as a center of business tourism. The major reason for that is the number of headquarters that are based here: United Nations, International Labor Organization, International Organization for Migration, World Health Organization and many others. It is also the place where Calvinism began and where it has been created the International Red Cross.

Convenient location in the heart of Europe, high-quality hotels, gastronomic traditions, cultural and historical heritage, luxury stores and a variety of entertainment made Geneva a suitable place for high level and relaxing vacation, where each traveler will appreciate its Geneva.

Shopping in Geneva

emiliaakulenko — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:04:56 +0000

Despite the small size of the city, Geneva easily can compete with Milan, London and Paris for the title of main shopping center in Europe. Geneva is the city of the gourmet, there are more than 3600 stores, covering large and diverse assortments, where you can find almost everything, but you have to expect to pay the price for what you love.

Mostly local boutiques and galleries are оriented to wealthy clients. The main shopping street is Rue du Rhone, situated between the Old City and the southern bank of Rhone. Along with Rue du Marche, they form a well-known shopping district in the heart of Geneva.

The famous and prestigious manufacturers of watches present here their legendary brands such as Patek Phillipe, Frank Muller, Ulysse Nardin and Piaget. Magnificent jewelry stores spread on these streets as well, such as De Grisogono, Van Cleef, Cartier, Bulgari.

Everywhere in Geneva your attention will be attracted by the number of luxury fashion and accessories boutiques of famous brands around the world such as Gianfranco Ferre, Gucci, Valentino, Luis Vuittone, Cavalli, Chanel, Burberry and many others.

Lovers of tobacco are invited to an unprecedented number of specialty stores selling cigars, including the legendary Zino Davidoff in Rue Rive.

Souvenir shops and high-quality gifts can be found on Rue du Mont Blanc. There is everything from the typical Swiss souvenirs to handmade porcelain.

The most famous brand boutiques are located near Noga Hilton Hotel, on the embankment Berges and Rue de la Croix d’Or.

If you would love to bring home antique goods the best place for shopping is the Old City. Most revitalized trade is on Grand-Rue, don’t be afraid to be lost in a labyrinth of streets: every corner promises a new surprise! Antique shops remind small museums with lots of medieval relics.

Ah, how cheerful shopping! You will surely find something for yourself in hundreds of boutiques and shopping centers in Geneva. The best idea to conclude shopping would be to visit one of the chocolate stores, where you can try a huge assortment of various chocolate products.