Within a very short period of time, online communication and specifically social media has managed to revolutionize the way individuals and organizations communicate. This digital revolution has given the ability to easily and rapidly share information globally thus pushing organizations to adopt the new emerging technologies to increase public involvement.
Each organization is unique in terms of its goals, targeted audience, key message…yet the following steps are general guidelines to achieve a successful online communication strategy.
1- CRM (Customer Relationship Management): Since an organization’s success is based on developing effective management of relationships with key stakeholders, It is crucial to build a coherent system to manage and follow all aspects of interaction between an organization and its clients, board, staff, donors, volunteers, community partners and the general public.
2- Online Communication Platforms: A Company’s Website, Social Media Networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest…) , Blog, App and Email Newsletters must be connected together to provide relevant content and optimized for sharing across the web.
3- Online Community Engagement: Developing a vibrant online community requires time and commitment to prepare the proper environment that will get the targeted audience to engage with your business. The nature of content is crucial to gain people’s interest. Yet to increase user engagement, a company should listen to comments, manage aggressive criticism, solve problems and initiate positive interactions to empower people to talk, making them feel a part of the community and network.
4- Online Campaigns: Depending on measurable goals set, Campaigns can serve multiple functions offering an incentive for people to take a desired action. We can list few types of campaigns: Advocacy Campaigns, Donation & Fundraising Campaign, Community Building & Social Sharing Campaign,and Promotional Campaign for Events. All Online campaigns should be launched at once across all platforms (website, social media, blog…) and should include attractive visuals and a clear call to action.
5- Evaluation and Measuring Impact: By referring to the strategy set, the number of people reached and those who have taken the desired action in any campaign type are basic performance metrics for measuring impact. Monitoring tools are important to track campaign development and results thus achieving future improvement. Tools such as Google Analytics, Hubspot, MailChimp, HootSuite, TweetReach, check more tools…) depend on the nature of the online communication platform. For example, the effectiveness of an Email Marketing campaign is related to the “Open Rate” percentage and in the case of a Landing Pages the percentage of conversion rate (visitor to lead) shows whether the campaign is successful or not.
Note that the digital strategy is only one part of a company’s overall strategy and thus all steps mentioned above should be based on the Communication Plan set which defines Objectives, Key Messages, Target Audience, Desired Action, Preferred Communication Channel, and the Indicators of Success.
Google launched Upgraded URLs in AdWords offering marketers and advertisers multiple benefits to edit and track the links in ads that show up on Google search results. If you don’t use tracking, there’s no difference between final URL and destination URL.
The Upgraded URLs means less time will be spent on adjusting URL tracking. In “Destination URLs” which consists of the landing page URL, that people are redirected to once they click on an ad, and the tracking section representing the tracking service. If you need to edit the tracking parameters, the ad URL will change and will be sent back to the editorial review thus will stop running during this review and all data related to the old URL will be lost.
Now in the Upgraded URL, the “Final URL” separates the Destination URL to two parts; Landing page section and Tracking Section. So if you want to update the tracking information at any level; account or campaign or ad group, your ad stats will not be affected.
The Final URL is the web address of the landing page and can include redirects but it will need to match the domain of your display URL.
Tracking Template Parameters and Custome Parameters
Under the advanced “URL Options” You can find the tracking template and the custome parameter fields.
The Tracking template includes the tracking information that will help AdWords understand how to assemble the URLs, in which you can set multiple ValueTrack parameters such as {lpurl}. Managing the URL tracking information can be done on verious levels and a shared tracking template can be used. For example, using a certain tracking template at the account level will apply across all of the URLs within that account.
Custom parameters helps you customize the information you are monitoring in addition to specifying certain values that will be inserted into URLs once an ad click is triggered. For example, to insert “12345” when a specific ad is clicked, a custom parameter is set, {_mycreative} only for this ad. Write: “mycreative” in the custom parameter field to insert 12345 whenever that ad is clicked
The URL upgrade also includes a location-tracking parameter such that advertisers can set up custome parameters to measure ad clicks based on location.
All recorded details about the ad perfomance can be reviewed in Google Analytics or any third-party analytics software. This information will help advertisers track exact information about each click on AdWords ads and will be able to understand where most traffic is coming from and which ads or keywords get the most clicks.
Destination URL is retiring and later this year, the “final URL” will become the only landing page option.
2015 Social Media Map: Update Guide with Live Links
If you are feeling overwhelmed by social media and wondering how to keep track with the latest networks and tools emerging everyday, check out the updated social media map that sums up all you need to know about the evolving social media landscape.
The map has been released by Overdrive Interactive. Its main purpose is to act as a social media reference guide and is organized into categories including a list of:
Social Networks, Social Media Listening, Content Discovery and Curation, Photo Sharing, Wikis , Social Commerce & Payment, Video Sharing, Social Music Networks, Social Media Management & Tracking, Social Reviews, Social Q&A, Social Recruiting, Blogging, Social Travel Networks, Professional Social Networks, Live Streaming, Micro Blogging, Social Gaming, Social Search, Local & Location-Based, International Social Networks, URL Shorteners.
If you are interested in finding any website, mobile app, tool or platform related to social media you will definitely find it here. The interactive map includes live links and is definitely a great reference for marketers to widen their online branding, strategies and marketing channels.
This social media marketing resource is free, you can download the full Map by clicking here.
Facebook launched a new feature for Facebook Pages to drive traffic to your website. Now you can create a Call-To-Action Button which is located in a fixed position within the cover photo section to the left of the “Like” button.
The new feature has been just introduced and therefore not available to everyone yet. Call-To-Action Button will roll out in the US over the next few weeks and worldwide starting in 2015 according to the official announcement. The Call-To-Action Button includes 7 options:
“Shop Now” “Contact Us” “Book Now” “Use App” “Sign Up” “Play Game” “Watch Video”
After choosing one of the options for the CTA button, Page admins should add the link of the website that the button will redirect visitors to, which is “Designed to bring a business’s most important objective to the forefront of its Facebook presence, call-to-action buttons link to any destination on or off Facebook that aligns with a business’s goals.” according to Facebook’s announcement.
One of the beta testers who has been using the CTA for the past three weeks confirmed its massive effectiveness in boosting its customer acquisition efforts. “Over the course of a three-week test, the Sign Up call-to-action button delivered a 2.5x higher conversion rate versus other comparable social placements aimed to drive new user acquisition.” — Brian Kim, Director of Acquisition, Dollar Shave Club
Check out Facebook’s official announcement of the CTA.
The term digital marketing also known as internet marketing or e-Marketing refers to the use of different marketing strategies to promote a certain product or service through different forms of digital media and has the ability to give numeric reports and exact results unlike traditional marketing which helps figuring out what works and what not. The internet is the most used channel when it comes to digital marketing others include wireless text messaging, mobile instant messaging, mobile apps, electronic billboards, digital television and radio channels, etc.
The picture below shows the usage of three terms according to Google trends:
The importance of Online Digital Marketing lies in the ability to drive traffic to websites, increasing the number of visitors which in terms will increase revenue, attention, impact, interactivity, and other related goals. When it comes to Digital Marketing the following questions should be answered: What is SEO, Social Media, E Newsletter, Blogging and the impact of it all.
Below is a brief introduction to each section: 101 Intro to Digital Marketing for Beginners.
– SEO: Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization is the process of getting traffic from the search engines and into the website. The focus is usually on Google, which holds 80% of the market in addition to Yahoo and Bing. You don’t need to be a developer to understand how it works but if you are then it is much easier. When you open Google and type few keywords, Google will show the most relevant website according to certain measures.
SEO is divided to two sections On-Page optimization and Off-Page optimization and there are two types of SEO strategies: Paid (SEM) vs Organic/Free. Organic or Free is competitive and free yet involves coding and is affected by the number of people visiting the website while Paid includes using Google adwords, which is based on the amount of money invested, the higher you pay for certain keyword combination the higher you rank.
– SMO: Social Media Optimization
SMO is the process of increasing awareness of a service, product or brand by using different social media outlets to achieve viral publicity. The most popular Social Media Platforms are Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, Youtube…. which are web-based and mobile-based technologies used to turn communication to a more interactive form among organizations, communities and individuals. The most popular terms used by those social media platforms are: “Like”, “Follow”, “Connect”. The importance of social media lies in the number of people involved on those networks that surpass one billion users. You can see the picture below showing the number of users on each social network.
– E Newsletter (Email Newsletter)
E-Newsletter is a correspondence sent via email, which is basically a single webpage and is considered one of the most successful mechanisms of communication and eMarketing on the web that really works.
There are two types of E-Newsletters, Emails and Text/Mobile Messaging. E-Newsletter forces you to build a list of emails of people or a community interested in your product or services that is a key to a successful campaign. The power of newsletters lies in maintaining customer relationship and persuading clients to purchase a product or use a service.
– Blogging
A blog is discussion or information site where the user determines the content.It i s an interactive form of publishing content on the web. The most powerful softwares are WordPress and Blogger which belongs to google.
Now what is the impact of all this, in time, the number of visitors will increase and thus helping your business grow.
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