6 great Simpsons quotes and how they relate to online marketing

admin April 3, 2017 Comments Off Blog, Online Advertising, Social Media

We know that some of you could turf out Simpsons quotes like there’s no tomorrow, but have you ever thought about how some of them can actually relate to your career as an online marketer? No?
We’ll help you out then…

“Now we play the waiting game…Ahh, the waiting game sucks. Let’s play Hungry Hungry Hippos!” Homer Simpson

Online marketing isn’t a waiting game. There’s plenty you can be doing in between your campaigns. Think about the strategic spend you can place on your social campaigns and targeting, which means that your wait time for results will be minimal. Granted, there’s a certain amount of being patient, but there’s so much more that can be done than creating campaigns and anticipating

“I used to be with it, but then they changed what “it” was, and now what I’m with isn’t it. And what’s “it” seems weird and scary to me.” Grampa Simpson
Well yes, this much is true – there are changes going on all the time in the online marketing world. One minute you know what you’re doing and the next it’s all changed.Trends come and go, even platforms change their interface at the blink of an eye. Keeping up is just part of a life in marketing and branding. The beauty of tracking online campaigns is the speed at which reactions can take place in order to keep everything relevant, cost effective and visible.

“I’d be mortified if someone ever made a lousy product with the Simpson name on it.” Lisa Simpson

Ah yes, the importance of perfection! We all know nobody’s perfect, but getting as close as you can is vital when putting your name out there. Your social accounts, online ads and website all proudly carry your name and branding and represent everything that’s great about you; company values, products, customer service. If you’re not proud to put your name to something, think twice before publishing to the world via online.

“Science. What’s science ever done for us?” Moe the Bartender
B..b..but science is everywhere! Believe it or not, there is a science behind everything you do in a marketing campaign. From the techniques you use to draw the eye to an ad, to the processes you use to get it seen and promoted, there are the sciences to all aspects of online advertising and marketing. Our analytics services might just help you out with that side of your business.

“Just because I don’t care doesn’t mean that I don’t understand.” Homer Simpson

Getting your messages seen by people is the first step. Getting them to care is the next one. Creating and publishing quality content is a start, but by continuing to target those who have genuine interest in your product, service or brand you’ll go a long way to making people care. There comes a time to accept that not everyone on the planet needs you, but those who want to share your greatness with you will build an authentic relationship with your business online. People might understand your message, but do they care?

“Yes, but I’d trade it all for a little more.” Mr. Burns
More, more, more…There’s a part of every marketer that wants more. Sometimes it’s about testing the water to see what reaction you can gauge from an online campaign. Other times you’re sure you’ve got it spot on and, hey presto, it works. The idea is to target your audience, not just the masses. Check back into your online analytics at regular intervals and take it all in for a moment. Listen to what the results say, and don’t get greedy. If you’ve reached your peak audience, great job! Pushing it too far may result in negative effects.

What social networks should you be using to kick-start your student recruitment in China?

admin February 18, 2016 Comments Off Online Advertising, Social Media, World Wide Web

The recruitment of international students to colleges and universities used to be something that happened with more traditional methods of advertising and media.

But with a 34% increase in Chinese students coming to study in Ireland last year, this seems to be a market that
establishments are aiming to target more meaningfully, but perhaps are struggling to bridge the long distance gap.

With several social networks and search engines that we know and love being unavailable in China, here’s a quick guide to popular ways of communicating with your new target audience via social media and online advertising.

WeChat

WeChat is the fastest growing online messaging app in China. It has similar characteristics to WhatsApp and allows people to communicate on a one-to-one basis or in a group. With over a billion accounts signed up for, around 650 million are active.

It is also home to a public accounts platform, which has a similar purpose to Facebook. This is the key feature that allows people to interact with businesses and vice versa. It’s mobile capabilities are seeing it become the most highly used social networking app in China.

WeChat provides text messaging, voice messaging, broadcast messaging, video conferencing, video games, and photo/video sharing, and isn’t limited to communication with only friends.

It also includes a ‘Moments’ features, which is similar to Instagram – it allows you to take a picture and share it with your friends and other social networks, with filters and captions available.

QQ

QQ is an alternative instant messaging service to WeChat, although it is owned by the same company, Tencent. It has similar features such as online social games, music, shopping, microblogging, movies, group chat and voice chat.

Last year, there were 829 million active accounts, which peaked at over 176 million simultaneous users online.

QQ moved to being a free platform in 2003, but there is still a premium membership scheme offering extra features like QQ mobile, ringtones, and SMS. Users can also purchase ‘Q Coins’ for in-app purchases such as avatars and items for blogs.

Weibo

Weibo has some similar features to both Twitter and Facebook. It’s one of the most popular networking sites in China, and is used by over 30% of Internet users.

The word Weibo is actually the Chinese word for “microblog”, which makes it the perfect platform to share your stories for potential students to read and interact with.

It has 222 million active users, a number that is growing fast – the platform has seen 38% year-on-year increases in users with active accounts.

Posts consist of up to 140 characters. In the same style as Twitter, you can mention users using ‘@’ and you can use hashtags to create tags by typing ‘#content#. The platform also allows for reposting someone’s content, formatting, favouriting, using emojis and auto-shortening URLs.

Baidu

Baidu is the largest online search engine in China. It is a highly intelligent service and offers various search types within its powerful software.

Not only does it boast a great search engine, it also hosts maps, a music service, encyclopaedia, language services, cloud storage, online communities, anti-virus software and SO much more.

It’s advertising platform is again similar to Google AdWords with a pay-per-click mechanism working across the search engine itself and sites in association with Baidu.

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There is clearly plenty of potential for educational establishments to pinpoint target future students in China through interest, courses of study and job aspirations.

Kongalytics is committed to growing its presence in China and will be featuring handy links to several Chinese social networks and search engines allowing you to feature online and advertise to those will will be excited at the prospect of studying in Ireland, the UK or the USA.

#RWC2015 Is Almost Here

admin September 17, 2015 Comments Off Miscellaneous, Social Media

The 2015 @RugbyWorldCup gets underway tomorrow and, as always, Twitter will be a great way of staying in touch with all the action.

This year, Twitter hopes to be at the heart of the tournament like never before, bringing fans closer in ways that simply weren’t possible four years ago.

There are plenty of ways to stay connected through Twitter and there will be a few special features making an appearance for the event.

There are, of course, special Rugby World Cup emojis.

Twickenham Stadium will also house a giant screen displaying fan’s tweets and vines.

And for England fans, the o2 Arena in London has been transformed into a canvas for a spectacular 3-D projection mapping light show. Fans can Tweet their messages of support using #WearTheRose and they will be projected onto the roof of The O2.

There’s TONNES more stuff going on over on Twitter. Take a look at their latest blog post to check it all out.

Enjoy the World Cup everyone!

We’re going to whisper this, but – “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas”

admin September 9, 2015 Comments Off Blog, Hints and Tips, Online Advertising, Social Media

It’s September, which can only mean one thing…It’s CHRISTMAAAAAAAS!

We’re truly sorry for the content that follows – it’s festive and early – but it’s true to say that as a marketer, you have to be ready. In fact you had to be ready yesterday.

Christmas is the biggest online marketing opportunity in the calendar and to not have a proper plan in place for the coming months is almost scandalous.

In the UK alone, £636million was spent online just on Christmas day last year. Across the world, online traffic increased from the festive period on 2013, a trend that is only set to continue this year.

Don’t believe us? Check out this ridiculously informative infographic that proves how online retail is increasing.

We also can’t continue without a mention for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, because they are a HUGE deal too. Last year, Black Friday was the biggest day for online sale…EVER! Sales were up by 92% than on the same day in 2013. Just make sure you’re prepared for the demand.

Visits to retail websites on Cyber Monday were also up by 39% from 2013 to 2014, so with the demand for bargains rife at that time of year, it might be worth considering offers of your own to bring in valuable customers.

So now you know how important it is to get your social and online campaigns planned, so what are you going to do about it?

Remember, when you’re setting out your schedules, remember to include deadlines, dates to publish, platforms and to make sure all personnel is in place to deal with the incoming traffic.

Here are a few ideas of what to plan:

Blogs – make your blogs relevant to your products or services. Ask questions, encourage engagement and educate your followers.
Social posts – get your Christmas Day messages and images ready now. Schedule them well ahead of time so that no one forgets to do it at the last minute.
Special offers – if applicable to your business, do you want to roll out discounts and specials heading in to the festive period?
Online advertising – what Facebook posts and tweets are you going to promote? What’s the budget? Decide now!

Be timely with everything, don’t leave anything too late. People are incredibly organized in this day and age with purchasing abilities at their fingertips, so to get ahead of your competition is vital.

Be decisive and stick to your plans as much as possible. Of course, factors can change, so don’t be afraid to move things around and re-plan along the way. But that’s why it’s vital to begin planning and run with it before you end up just doing a few slap-dash campaigns for the sake of it.

You might even want to stick to a theme, an idea, a single campaign. Penguins worked for John Lewis.

What kind of subjects should you be planning blogs and social posts about? How about…

Order deadlines
Special offers
Opening hours for the holidays
Highlight great products or services
Last minute ideas
Something for the kids – a Santa message maybe?
Post Christmas sales
How your products/services tie in to the festivities

Feel ready to spread festive cheer this year and don’t make your Christmas campaigns a last minute rush. If you enjoy the festivities, so will your customers!

PS: Over 40% of consumers expect an online response to queries within an hour, so also make plans to deal with an influx of inquiries. Keep up your customer service with prompt and helpful responses.

Bonus Content Klaxon

Here are a few resources that you might like to use for your social campaigns.

Free Festive Stock Images

Christmas Song Lyrics – y’know, for all your cheesy blogs…

Free Christmas Fonts – just double check each license before you download

Gifs, gifs, gifs

To hide, or not to hide?

admin August 12, 2015 Comments Off Blog, Facebook, Social Media

That is the question.

When you’re scrolling through your Facebook News Feed, the chances are you come across content from brands that you’re not all that interested in, so you might hide it from your News Feed.

But Facebook has noticed that a growing number of people are using the ‘Hide’ function to almost tick off things that they have seen and maybe even interacted with. This has prompted action from Facebook given the amount of negative page activity that was occurring.

It has to be said that Kongalytics has noted a growth in negative feedback indicating that there was a growing trend in hiding stories. Marketers can now breath a sigh of relief at the latest news, and take comfort in the fact that many brands are facing the same negativity on their hard thought-out content.

To reflect these changes in consumer behaviour, Facebook released the following statement:

"Hiding something is usually a strong indication that someone didn’t want to see a particular post. There is also a small group of people on Facebook who hide a very high number of stories in their News Feed. In fact, some people hide almost every post in their News Feed, even after they’ve liked or commented on posts. For this group of people, “hide” isn’t as strong a negative signal, and in fact they may still want to see similar stories to the ones they’ve hidden in the future.

To do a better job of serving this small group, we made a small update to News Feed so that, for these people only, we don’t take “hide” into account as strongly as before. As a result, this group of people has started seeing more stories from the Pages and friends they are connected to than in the past. Overall, this tweak helps this group see more of the stuff they are interested in."

Do be cautious though, this isn’t an end to Facebook algorithms making a negative dent on your reach – that will still occur although at least it may be for genuine reasons, which might give you a headache, but at least you can begin to take positive action.

You can read Facebook’s full announcement here.

Top 5 Facebook Updates

admin July 22, 2015 Comments Off Blog, Facebook, Social Media, Updates

As Facebook are constantly announcing new updates, Kong Digital have put together a list of the top five most recent updates to help you understand what these changes mean.

1. Facebook adds Snapchat-style stickers and sliding filters to app

Facebook has begun allowing users to add filters and stickers to their pictures which are very similar to the features which Snapchat offer.

The update which is being rolled out gradually to users of Facebook’s iOS app will allow user to add text to a picture, change its colour and position on that picture, see how filters looked before and after using sliders, and also add stickers, all of which are popular features on Snapchat.

2. Sign Up for Messenger, Without a Facebook Account

This update allows users to avail of all the features Facebook Messenger offers without creating a Facebook account.

To access this, users most click on the “Not on Facebook” option provided and sign up using their name, phone number and a photo.

3. Instagram search and explore page

Instagram’s new Explore page will allow users to discover trending Tags and Places as they occur.
The improved search feature makes it easier to find the people, places, and tags you’re looking for by providing sections including; Explore posts, Discover People Curated Collections and Trending Tags.

4. Facebook Pages Can Now Show How Quickly They Respond To Customers’ Messages

Following Facebook’s introduction of “Saved Replies,” which allows Page admins to compose, save and reuse message responses to quickly respond to incoming inquirespublicisecan now publicize how fast they respond to these inquiries.
The new “Response Rate” feature will show a Page’s responsiveness information to Page admins and if the response rate is high, it will also be displayed to Page visitors through an icon below the cover photo.

Following Facebook’s update of taking into account who has watched a video and how long for, the focus is now on taking into account the users interactions with these videos.

This includes determining whether someone found a particular video interesting or not based on their actions, such as choosing to turn on sound, making the video full screen, and enabling high definition.
These actions allow Facebook to determine what videos users like to see, enabling them to show similar videos and also placing these videos higher up in the user’s news feed.

5. Taking into Account More Actions on Videos

Following Facebooks update of taking into account who has watched a video and how long for, the focus is now on taking into account the users interactions with these videos.

These actions allow Facebook to determine what videos users like to see, enabling them to show similar videos and also placing these videos higher up in the user’s newsfeed.

Facebook Business Page Reach

admin January 20, 2015 Comments Off Blog, Online Advertising, Search Engine Optimisation, Social Media

If you are a business owner who utilises Social Media to grow your business, you have probably already seen some signs of decreasing organic reach on your Facebook Business Page. There are some indications from Facebook that this trend will continue over the coming months and businesses will have to pay to get their content seen by potential customers.

This may seem alarming and will probably frustrate you and your team, but don’t get too worried – instead look at what opportunities may arise from having more control over the target audience that will see your content.

At Kong Digital, we are strong believers in data analysis. Understanding what is happening in your social network provides you with knowledge that allows for smarter decisions on your marketing campaigns on a daily basis. Having insight into the behaviours of your online community across social platforms, online advertising and SEO is a powerful tool that will ultimately help you to win in your sector.

By categorising social media and online advertising campaigns, you will gain a better understanding of the true demographics of the people who are most interested in the various aspects of your business. You can therefore make sure that your content is promoted to the best possible audience both demographically and geographically. Analysing your social and advertising data on a regular basis will provide you with the necessary insights to make better decisions and drive positive ROI.

Facebook is obviously looking to increase its revenue by making businesses pay to get their content seen, but by doing this they are also giving you control of your target audience. Whether your content is seen by 1000, 10,000 or 100,000 people, if they’re not interested in what you have to offer then you are wasting your time and energy.

That’s why we say “Take Control”! Understand your target audience, know what content drives engagement, recognise the signs that highlight what’s working and what’s not. Get started by allocating a small budget for your social advertising and start pinpoint targeting your potential customers and tracking the ROI of your social and advertising activity.

By taking control, you will greatly increase your ROI in terms of both time and money you have put into your Social Media and Advertising activity. You will also see a much better reach to engagement ratio, which in return will have a positive effect on your organic presence on social media and search engines.

We look forward to sharing more in-depth strategies over the coming months on how to get the best ROI from your Social Media and Advertising campaigns.

6 Things We Learnt This Week

admin November 7, 2014 Comments Off Social Media

Here’s the lowdown of what the social networking world has taught us at Kong towers this week.

– Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t like the Facebook movie: ‘The Social Network’ Facebook founder says the plot lines are made up because plain hard work isn’t “glamourous enough”.

– Everyone loves penguins: John Lewis released its super-cute Christmas advert, and it was a massive hit on Twitter and Facebook

– The RDS needs Wi-Fi: The Web Summit may have been a big hit, but the wi-fi outages caused a bit of a storm.

– World’s first selfie was taken in 19th Century: In 1839, Robert Cornelius set up his camera and moved to be in front of the lens. He sat tight for five minutes and created the first photographic self-portrait.

– Social Media can save pets: An online campaign successfully found Border Collie Jasper, who went missing in the Lake District with his owner.

– It’s possible to turn a fail into a #win: Chevrolet spokesman Rikk Wilde fluffed his lines when describing the Colorado Bumgarner saying it “combines class winning and leading, um, you know, technology and stuff.” It was turned into a great campaign!

Tune In, Log In: How TV and Facebook go hand-in-hand

admin July 25, 2014 Comments Off Social Media, Technology

The way we watch television is changing, there’s no doubting that. With the additions of recordable TV, online players and social networks, audiences are spending their watching hours using various devices at the same time.

The phenomenal rise of the smartphone and social networks means that multi-tasking has been taken to new heights. The numbers of people talking about TV programmes, films and advertisements on Facebook is on the up, so brands and advertisers should take note and react accordingly.

Not convinced? Let’s crunch some numbers:

* While watching TV, 73% access devices constantly or very often and 78% access a device during a TV show. Continue reading

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Tag: Social Media

WeChat

QQ

Weibo

Baidu

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