Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn’t have in your home.     

David Frost

Years ago, one of my friend from my Marketing Communication class told me that TV and Radio will be dead in the future. She said that everyone is on their smartphones and tablets, nobody is watching TV anymore. As an International student, she had not watched TV for 1 year and she did not even miss it.

To be honest, I had to disagree with her statement. I do agree that there are less people that are interested in watching broadcast TV and buy a radio to tune into radio station anymore. However, it doesn’t mean that it’s the end of TV and Radio. There are still people watching TV at home, connecting it to the internet. Listening to radio in the car and on their phone because it is free music!

TV’s death has been greatly exaggerated over the past few years, but is it true?

Along with the development in technology, consumers have more options to watch content on the most convenient devices. As a Gen Z, I do agree that I watched less TV than Netflix or YouTube on my smartphone. But viewers like me are predominantly the young and affluent people who have time on their hands by contrast with folks who are busy with family obligations and keeping a job.

So.. Is TV dead?

No, it’s simply advanced and evolved. There may be less Gen-Z and millennial watching cable TV , but most of the Gen-X and Baby Boomer are still browsing their TV channels. Remember that you can watch Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime and basically everything on your TV now? This is how TV has evolved, you may not only watch cable TV programs, you have many options like Apple TV, Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and more!

I remembered when I moved to Singapore for the first 2 years, I didn’t have a TV. My sister then bought one and we got all excited to watch HD YouTube music videos and do some Zumba workout at home. I also play video games that connects to the TV screen and it is fun!

To conclude, TV simply won’t die but instead it is evolving and will continue to evolve and advance further according to the technology.

What do you think? Is TV important to you? Or it’s simply dead and means nothing in your daily life? Comment down below!

People get fake likes, fake followers, fake friends and start living in a fake virtual world. Until there is nothing left real in their lives

Shreyanssh D

Have you ever seen an ordinary Instagram account with thousands or maybe hundred thousands of followers? However, when you peek at the likes they received in in their post is just less than a hundred? Well, you might have encountered an account who bought their influences.

How to buy Instagram followers

It’s really easy and cheap to buy fake followers nowadays, you can easily find the app in Google Play or App Store to do that for you. Just type in your Instagram handle and pay for your “followers”

It’s cheap and easy to buy fake followers, one of the examples would be BUZZOID, they provide instant delivery, claimed to deliver “real likes” and even customer support.

Why do some brands buy fake followers/likes?

The reason brands buy Instagram likes and followers is simple: engagement.

They want to be seen as attractive by their consumers, also by having more likes they might appear on the top ‘Explore’ tab. Meaning that they might actually get real humans to take a look at their posts. Some users might even think that brands with more followers seem more established as compared to new accounts with less followers.

Why You Should Never Buy Instagram Likes

1. Your Competitors (and Instagram) Can Tell When You Buy Instagram Likes.
2. Instagram Will Punish You.
3. Fake Likes Do Not Equal Real Business.
4. It’s Unethical.

You might tarnish your brand image by buying Instagram likes/followers. You might get lucky in the first few times, but your brand name might be at risk in the long-run.

What to do instead?

1. Pick a great name that’s optimized for SEO.
2. Write a micro blog with good and long captions.
3. Using Hashtags when posting
4. Engage and reply with community

Take a look at the video below to gain insights on how to grow your Instagram account!

Have you ever encountered any Instagram account with fake followers/likes? Do you think it’s wise to spend money on fake followers/likes? Comment down below:)

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

– Maya Angelou

There are tons of options for marketers to promote their business. Besides traditional channels like direct marketing, billboard ads, there’s digital marketing like email marketing, mobile marketing, social media channels such as Instagram and Facebook.

On my first semester as a marketing student, I took Marketing Communication as one of my module. It was rather interesting because my lecturer used to work at Mediacorp as a Vice-President, she would share a lot of her experiences and it inspired me a lot.

One of the thing I learnt during IMC planning in my Marcom module is that traditional marketing uses a lot of money and it is definitely not affordable for startups and SMEs.

IMC could be way off-budget for some businesses, therefore Forbes has come up with 7 marketing campaign ideas that’s inexpensive and suitable for small businesses.

1. Social Media – It’s inexpensive and some can be free!
2. Website – Effective website with clear business information, also improve the chances of showing up in search results through SEO.
3. Business Partnerships – Try teaming up with other local businesses and promote each other’s businesses.
4. Vehicle Branding – If you have a company vehicle that you regularly drive around, consider branding it with your company logo and information.
5. Sidewalk Signs – If your business is located on a main street where a lot of pedestrians go, try putting a sign on the sidewalk outside your business. 
6. Local Media – Sending out press releases and networking with local reporters.
7. Marketing To Existing Customers – Turn them into Repeat customers

Apart from the cost factor, I’m pretty sure that both traditional and digital IMC are still being highly used in the current market. The next question is, how do we create a successful IMC? MediaSpace Solution has come up with steps on how we can create successful IMC.

6 Steps to Creating Successful Integrated Marketing Campaigns

Step 1: Know Your Target Audience

You have to understand who your target audience is. Understanding their needs and wants will help you choose the right channels and develop effective messaging that is appealing and addressing target market’s need.

Step 2: Select Your Channels

Don’t pollute your marketing efforts by selecting 12 channels when you could have equal or greater success with only 4. If your target audience isn’t on Facebook, then don’t bother with Facebook just because social media gurus tell you you HAVE to be on there. Don’t sink ad dollars and time into channels that aren’t going to be effective or give you the ROI you’re looking for.

Step 3: Pay Attention to Brand Consistency

While messaging should be tailored to each individual channel, you must be certain your visual brand identity remains consistent across all. This goes beyond having a logo present and entails having an overarching design. Are your colors and fonts the same? Style of graphics and photography consistent? Overall, does your content on Twitter have the same look and feel as your printed brochures? Prospects should be able to make an immediate visual connection when seeing your ads, no matter where those ads live.

One of the example would be Dropbox, a could-based file sharing platform. It is great at consistent design and personalization across channels. You won’t find any Dropbox communication or platforms without their signature logo.

Step 4: Develop Content with Repurposing in Mind

Creating content for one channel on a consistent basis is challenging enough, creating for multiple channels consistently can feel diabolical. To get the best results (and make your life much simpler) make sure that every piece of content you develop can be used in multiple places. For instance, a white paper could be broken down and made into 6 different blog posts. You could take the content from a popular blog post and turn it into a script to create a more engaging video hosted by your CEO.

Remember to think of your audience on each channel to determine the best kind of content to develop.

Step 5: Get All Team Members on Board

If you have multiple people working on different projects within the same integrated campaign, you’ll want to be sure all team members are on the same page so messaging and band image stays consistent. This could be as simple as having weekly meetings.

The same is true if your company is using an outside marketing agency for your integrated marketing campaigns, make sure all members are on the same page and understand what is going on. This helps to ensure that the campaign is consistent and helps to manage company brand standards throughout all platforms.

Step 6: Track and Adjust

As with any campaign, an integrated effort requires the right analytics to determine whether or not you’re hitting the mark and seeing enough conversions. You might use a specific tracking platform for your social media channels and a simple 1-800 number for your print campaigns. If you’re not getting the ROI you had aimed for, adjust and try again.

With the steps above, I’m sure that you will be able to excel your Integrated Marketing Campaign successfully with as little budget as possible. I hope you have learnt some useful tips from my blog! Your comments and suggestions will be greatly appreciated 🙂

“The best place to hide a dead body is the second page of Google search.” 

Anonymous

For businesses, their website is often the first point of contact between the brand and the customer. Most people discover businesses via search engines in today’s connected world.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is all about making sure that your website gets a prominent placement in the search engine result page (SERP).

How important SEO is? You can imagine when you search for a topic on Google, you would probably focus more on the first or second page of the results. That’s how important SEO is for marketers, if your website is located on the third or fourth page of search result, nobody would visit your page!

Let’s find out more about SEO!

What is SEO?

SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.

Soooo… What goes into SEO?

• Quality of traffic. You can attract all the visitors in the world, but if they’re coming to your site because Google tells them you’re a resource for Apple computers when really you’re a farmer selling apples, that is not quality traffic. Instead you want to attract visitors who are genuinely interested in products that you offer.
• Quantity of traffic. Once you have the right people clicking through from those search engine results pages (SERPs), more traffic is better.
• Organic results. Ads make up a significant portion of many SERPs. Organic traffic is any traffic that you don’t have to pay for.

So, Is SEO a Science or An Art?

Why SEO is Science?

1. Research is required – SEO needs research within:

• Google’s algorithm (to understand the facts of how it works)
• Your website’s audience (to understand what kind of content they want)
• Keywords (to understand what those people are searching for)

2. Numbers drive critical functions – the numbers provide guidelines in some critical parts to SEO like:

• 50 to 60 (optimal character length of Meta Title)
• 150 to 160 (optimal character length of Meta Description)
• 100 (having keyword in the first hundred words of a page’s content is relevancy factor)
• 115 or under (optimal URL length)
• 4 or under (the number of seconds your website should load)
• Backlinking URLs, Social Shares

3. Formulas are the brain of search engines – Google algorithm that changes hundred of times per year
4. Observation is ongoing

Why SEO is an Art?

1. Compelling, Concise and Clickable Copy

The metadata that shows in the results page has a restriction on the number of characters.

So, do you jam in as many keywords as possible? Or, do you write convincing copy that’ll get clicks? If you approach your SEO artfully, you’ll do the latter.

2. Clear, Smart Keyword Hierarchy & Structure

Pop quiz! What option will drive better SEO results?

• A: Throw every keyword applicable to your business on every page of your site?
• B: Design an architecture that places keywords on individual pages?

Correct answer = B!

Mapping out how you place keywords throughout a website is not a one-size-fits-all formula nor do you just “plug ‘em” into your content. It takes careful planning and ingenuity.

3. Not falling victim to generically naming links “Click Here”

Naming your links “click here” negatively impacts SEO (and is also bad for UX). It lacks the artful approach that search engine bots are seeking to understand how content and pages connect.

Here’s a common, but poorly designed link:

• I wrote a blog about common SEO mistakes. Click here to read.

Now, here’s one with some intentionality (remember, this is better for people and robots):

• I wrote a blog about common SEO mistakes.

In a single sentence on a single page, no, this isn’t a huge deal. But, compounded over many pages on a website — it becomes a huge deal. Ensuring a website’s internal linking structure is consistently simple and concise is a sign of crafty design.

In conclusion, SEO is both science and an art. Only using a scientific approach will keep you in the race but will never push you ahead. Only using a creative approach may have disastrous results and really isn’t sustainable. Thus, mastering both strategy would be beneficial for the company.

What do you think? Is SEO a science or an art? Or maybe both? Tell me more on you opinion down below!

“If you think that the internet has changed your life, think again. The Internet of Things is about to change it all over again!”

Brendan O’Brien

I’m pretty sure that you all have either heard of Internet of Things or Big Data, but do you know what it really means? How does it benefit us? Is it dangerous? Let me start of with the definition first.

Internet of Things (IoT)

Internet of Things refers to the billions of physical devicecs around the world that are now connected to the internet, all collecting and sharing data. The examples would be a smart bulb, Google Glass, and many more. Pretty much any physical object can be transformed into an IoT device if it can be connected to the internet to be controlled or communicate information.

Big Data

Big Data is a phrase used to mean a massive volume of both structured and unstructured data that is so large it is difficult to process using traditional database and software techniques. Examples of big data might be petabytes (1,024 terabytes) or exabytes (1,024 petabytes) of data consisting of billions to trillions of records of millions of people – all from different sources.

There are specific attributes that define big data. In most big data circles, these are called the four V’s: Volume, Variety, Velocity, and Veracity.

So, what are the benefits of IoT and Big Data on marketing?

1. Analyze customer buying habits across platforms
2. Gather previously unobtainable data about how consumers interact with devices and products
3. Gain deeper insights into where a customer is in the buying journey
4. Provide real-time, point-of-sale notifications and targeted ads
5. Quickly resolve issues to close sales and keep customers happy

An example would be the increasing use of smart home. With smart devices you can easily manage your home devices from one place, from your smartphone or tablet. Moreover, you can easily monitor your smart devices activity.

Who wouldn’t want a smart home? I have been dreaming to have one since I was a kid. I can check if my door is locked without going back home, I can turn on the light without walking to the switch. I can even turn on the air-conditioner in my house 30 minutes before I arrive home. What a dream!

However, with that many benefits, IoT and Big Data do have a few problems too!

The risks of cyber security are more complex than ever, by 2020 every person will generate 1.7 megabytes of information per second. As new technologies evolve, cyber criminals adapt and discover new hacking methods to apprehend sensitive data like users privacy. AI and IoT have the potential to revolutionize society, but what will happen when these new technologies are weaponized by cyber criminals? 

IoT and Big Data has indeed help to create a lot of convenience for consumers and marketers. However, it’s undeniably true that there are still a lot of problems that need to be improved on. Nevertheless, it is up to the use to choose whether the benefits outweigh the problems.

So, what do you think? After weighing the pros and cons, which side are you in? Feel free to drop a comment below:)

Enjoy these funny comics I found online:)

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If your plans don’t include mobile, your plans are not finished.

Wendy Clark, Coca-Cola

Mobile marketing enables organizations to engage with mobile audience in the most interactive method through any mobile device or network. It gets you as close to your customer as possible.

Mobile has become an integral part of our life whether it is through social media, google, mobile app, etc. Marketer can easily advertise on any platform of mobile devices.

Who wouldn’t love mobile phones? It’s compact, personal, and it’s packed with every essential apps we need. Even mobile phones has now outnumbered us! There are more mobile phones on the planet than humans. Therefore, it is one of the best devices for marketers to advertise on.

Even I couldn’t live without my phone! If I was given a choice to choose between a laptop and a phone, I would definitely choose my phone. I could bring it everywhere, watch Netflix, play games, connect with my friends, set a reminder and wake me up in the morning. I wouldn’t remember to write this blog without the reminder from my google calendar.

To be an effective marketer, one shall improve their mobile marketing strategy. Agency Analytics has come up with 8 things you can do to improve your strategy for mobile:

1. Speed Up Your Site – Nearly 70% of consumers say that page speed impacts their purchasing decisions. When they encounter a slow website, they will tend to refresh or even close the tab.
2. Focus on Local Marketing – Keeping your Google My Business page up-to-date, get your business listed in many local directories, and the most important thing is to be reachable by customers.
3. Create Mobile-Friendly Emails – Keep your messages short and simple
4. Announce Promotions Via Text – Marketing emails are nice to show medias to the customers, however, it often go unread. Text, on the other hand, usually get opened.
5. Incorporate Video into Your Content Strategy – It’s easier to watch video as it can deliver visual, audio and text at the same time.
6. Optimize for Micro-Moments – Think about what kinds of micro-moments might lead people to your content, and then work on optimizing for those queries.
7. Optimize for Voice Search – Think of what kinds of voice search queries people might use to find your site, and optimize it.
8. Make Your Site Easy to Use – Suitable font size, easy to use navigation button, clean and organized mobile site.

I personally think that it is important to have a good mobile marketing strategy. Few days ago, I stumbled upon an ad on Instagram Story and immediately thought of my dad. My dad has always been a fan of wooden-looking ornaments and it’s his birthday next month. I was thinking of buying him one of the incense burner.

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I subscribed to their newsletter, and planned to talk to my brother before making a purchase. But then, they sent me an email that I will get 15% of discount if I make a purchase within 24 hours. So……. I made a purchase immediately after receiving that email.
I must say that they really maximize their mobile marketing strategy and I’m honestly impressed!

Once a viral program gets started, there is nothing to stop it.

Richard Dawkins

Viral marketing is a powerful method that seeks to spread information about a product or service from person to person by word of mouth or sharing via the internet or email.  – Investopedia

How to be viral? What makes a content more favorable than the others? Creating content that will go viral is a complex and challenging task. However, a good place to start is with Jonah Bergers six STEPPS

Let’s watch how Samsung A80 x BLACKPINK uses TikTok to advertise their product

This video has been viewed more than 44.3M times. Ever since then, users from TikTok has been remaking, dancing, and sharing this video. Currently it has more than 14.9B views worldwide. Samsung received 14.9B views for free! That’s crazy!

So, let’s see how many principles did Samsung used in their marketing campaign?

1. Social Currency – Make your customer feel good and give them something to brag about.
   Blackpink’s large fan base feel exclusive and awesome to be able to own a phone with their favorite K-POP idol in it.

2. Triggers – We share what’s at the top of our minds.
When people hear #danceawesome or Blackpink, they will
associate them with Samsung

3. Emotion – We share what we care about.
The dance video is clearly very catchy and entertaining,
netizens LOVED IT.

4. Public – We imitate what we see people around us doing.
Hundred thousands of TikTok users has been reposting and
remaking the video. At the same time, their followers
watched the video and follow them.

It is a big step for Samsung to use TikTok to advertise their brand new product, and it’s crazy how it spreads too! Kudos to the marketing team!

Are you the type of person that will follow a viral trend or avoid it? For me, I would always watch and laugh at the viral trends, but I have never tried it until this very recent moment.

I have been avoiding TikTok since 2017 and I cannot believe that I finally tried it in 2020. Why? Because everyone has been posting their TikTok videos on Instagram Stories and it caught my attention.

To end this week’s blog, here’s my first ever TikTok video with my dearest friends. It was really fun! TikTok combines dancing, music, funny filters and it has been spreading like a wildfire among younger audiences.