Dec
17

Branding: How It Works In The Social Media Age?

Branding and Social Media. Two widely important yet misunderstood in today’s communication world. In the old days, brands -small or large- would depend on “ATL” advertising to spread the message, later they would rely on their websites or micro sites to sustain and support their campaign. A decade or so ago, these brands would rely also on their digital presence to push sales through e-commerce. Earlier this millennium, Social Media was introduced. What was thought of as another way to communicate between people such as IMs, now is highly being thought of as an important tool to boost brand perception, sales and equity. Brands finally realized that “pushing” the message is not the way to go, they could not treat customers as followers, it is now more of a peer-to-peer process.

Most, if not all, of the giant global brands have presence on all social networks, especially Facebook, Twitter and recently, Google+. These brands use social networks to communicate to their customers each in their own way; some rely on Facebook, while others might rely on Twitter or Google+.

Social Media, through its networks, can lift a brand, and might as well shut it down. Customers are no longer followers, they are leaders in the communication industry, they have the power to demand an answer to a question or a solution to a problem and brands nowadays cannot hide anymore.

AYTM Market Research surveyed 2,000 Internet users, randomly chosen from its huge built-in online panel. The researchers asked a variety of questions about how Internet users like to get updates about brands, where they like to hang out online, the kinds of people brand managers can expect to encounter in the social media universe, and whether prospective customers prefer to interact with brands on social media.

Dec
16

Sharing Trends in 2011

Wow what a phenomenon! Haven’t you realized that whenever you go onto a “website” nowadays, the first thing you think of is, do I want to share it? If yes, where are those “share” buttons because they are DEFINITELY there! Would you agree with me that people are more interested in sharing rather than actually reading and learning? Anyways, that’s not our topic for this post.

It is almost the end of the year, and AddThis have done it again. Where are users sharing more content? Which Social Networks takes up the “sharing” reign for this year? Key findings and facts to notice is StumbleUpon creates a 320% viral lift… Email, Print & Favorites -altogether- make up only 14%, and MySpace, yup as thought, keeps declining this time by 56.9%… What about the social media giants? The below infographic declares it all.

Dec
16

Is Social Media Ruining Our Minds?

One thing for sure is that Social Media has changed the way our daily life functions! Although it has given us the ability to be able to multitask like never before and got us closer to each other, but I don’t think 140 character news 50 years ago was considered news, or a video below 10 min was considered a “news report” at all! Moreover, thanks to Facebook, do we really need to remember any event happening soon? Is there a reason I should remember my cousin’s wife’s maiden name, technically one never cared about his, but still, everything is right there, one click away from you! The below infographic discusses all: the speed of life, how things are always there when we need them, the attention span difference between the young and the adolescent of today’s world – this freaked me out by the way – and many other interesting facts.

My conclusion is, and I am not biased since I have affinity for and “work” in social media, but I believe the positive side and the advantages on Social Media / Networks are much bigger and important to focus on rather than the negative, that is if social media was used productively and efficiently.

Dec
12

Cloud Computing & Its Impact on The Businesses Around the World

Many companies are using Gmail integration as a source of Cloud computing for their company emails. Google docs scored the highest rank of document cloud sharing last year, Apple released their iCloud earlier this fall… As we go more into the future, people want to grab everything right now and from anywhere! Companies want their employees to be able to share documents and amend them simultaneously without the hassle of sending and receiving emails. People want to snap a photo and have it directly found on their laptops and other machines. So what is the impact of cloud computing really on all of us? What are the primary reasons for that? What are companies using cloud computing for and what do they ask of it in the future?

Business technology company CSC commissioned a survey of IT decision makers in eight countries to find out the motivations behind their move to cloud computing systems and its effects on their businesses. The data they distilled might surprise you, and it’s all packed neatly into the infographic below.

Courtesy of Mashable.

Dec
11

Norte Photoblocker

So you are at a pub or club… you are hanging out after a long day at work or you just want to forget a fight you had with a friend earlier that day, you are being yourself; having fun, dancing, meeting new people and suddenly a person who knows you snaps a photo “for memory’s sake” and wants to post it on Facebook [or any other social network]. How do you feel about that? Afraid your girlfriend might see you dancing with another girl? Afraid you will get fired after your boss sees an “unacceptable” photo of you being circulated? Cerveza Norte has the solution! Simple… Genius!

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