Just imagine if 10 years ago, when Twitter first launched, I told you that in the future social media would hold the key to your brands’ marketing success; that you would rely on it to communicate with your customers or that you’d spend 80% of your yearly budget on social media marketing alone.

I’m guessing that most of you would have thought I was mad, right? Probably because I was only 14 at that time… but you appreciate where I’m going with this.

Well here we are, living in a world that now sees some of the largest and most successful businesses in the world doing exactly this. Yet there is still some scepticism around using social media as a tool for business – with many still under the illusion that it’s a ‘dark art’ in the marketing arena. This is largely down to a lack of understanding, as anything new or innovative can seem daunting and overbearing to anyone at first, but that shouldn’t put you off seeing its true potential.

Businesses and organisations from all walks of life come to us at Creativeworld to develop their online strategies and brand presence; both through social media and other digital channels, and they all have different agendas, goals and visions.

What’s important to us as an agency is that, from the start of our work with any client, we understand these expectations and build a plan of action around them, ensuring their core business values and offerings are instantly recognisable and branded in line with any other marketing mediums in place.

It’s easy to get lost in statistics, analytics, hashtags and data reports, trust me, but part of our job is to ensure that we translate your social media development and results into a language you and your team understands.

You’d be surprised just how many brands still aren’t doing social media right, so make sure you embrace the ‘dark art’ and become the leader in your industry.

Big data, in small terms, is mass quantities of data collected and streamlined to be used for market research. These ‘datasets’ are structured or unstructured depending on the source, accuracy and volume of chosen subject. Either-or, this data is being captured and cleansed using modern software for monitoring behavioural patterns, to predict or evaluate change in all walks of life.

Creativeworld – Making Digital Marketing a Language Everyone Understands

From a marketing perspective, big data can be used as a research tool to engage and develop relations with customers. Using existing software, search engine results and web analytics can be formulated to help predict online customer behaviour to grow web traffic and sales conversion. User information and trends can also be gathered on the prevailing frontline – social media. Collectively, we can see endless amounts of customer data being surged through social platforms, which can be quantified and used for positive customer relations management.

As an example of how big data is being used for informed decision making, let’s look at human resources software maker, Workday, who provide a data capture tool to alert which employees are more active on LinkedIn.  This information is said to be used to identify high performers, although it’s hard to ignore the probability this tool could track employees seeking alternative career opportunities – which could raise questions around motives in data analysis.

To find out more about big data and how it can be used in line with your marketing strategy, contact an expert in the Creativeworld team!

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the ninja skill of structuring your website so that a search engine can easily determine the content of your website and help provide relevant search results. 

If you do a search for “Fluffy Bongo Drums”, you want Fluffy Bongo Drums to appear… right?

Search engines think so too. How they do this may vary a bit, but there is a general set of best practices that help get a site ‘findable’ on the web.

Search engines like Google constantly work on improving their search algorithms – to promote relevant content and also to penalise sites that try to cheat the system using what is known as “black hat” methods. Even for a website that has been originally built to be ‘SEO friendly’, as technologies develop this may need adapting – for instance, maybe to be responsive so that mobile and tablet users get the content promoted to them more effectively.

Creativeworld – Making Digital Marketing a Language Everyone Understands

For this reason SEO is a continual process. Websites need to be created with this in mind and also kept up to date as the search engines evolve. Google wants to deliver the most relevant results to the user so if your website is relevant, then SEO can help make sure the search engines are aware that your site should appear in the search results.

SEO can also help obtain higher ranking placement in the search results for relevant keywords but the search terms are highly competitive – this is closely tied in with Search Engine Marketing (SEM) which uses strategies to promote organic and paid listings. SEM is then often used in conjunction with SEO, so that a site can not only appear in the search results, but appears higher than other listings that might otherwise be competing for relevancy of those keywords.

If you’re wanting to get the most out of your website through the power of SEO why not get in touch with one of our Creativeworld digital experts and see how we can help you and your business grow.

MAKING DIGITAL MARKETING A LANGUAGE EVERYONE UNDERSTANDS

Content Marketing is a term I’m sure you’ve all heard used here there and everywhere in recent times in the marketing industry. Surprisingly, most of the time its used wrongly. But what does it actually mean and how can you benefit from it?

Well in simple terms, content marketing is pretty much exactly what this very post is – a method of creating, developing and distributing relevant and valuable information to acquire and engage with both new and existing audiences. Simple right?

So why do it, what’s the benefit? Great question. Depending on what angle you are coming from, content marketing can be used in a variety of different ways.

Working in the B2B arena? Perfect. Content marketing is a great way of generating and nurturing new business leads whist also keeping a consistent dialogue with existing clients. B2C? Great for that too. By providing original and unique content, you can organically change an audience’s whole perception of your brand and products along with becoming a source of inspiration and guidance.

With this new form of marketing becoming increasingly popular amongst marketers from all backgrounds, it is important to focus on a ‘quality over quantity’ approach. Ultimately you want your content to ‘travel’, and the only way it’s going to move anywhere, other than your website, is to ensure it’s worthy of doing so.

So how does content marketing fit into your current marketing strategy? Well, there’s a whole host of answers, solutions and options available which ultimately depend on two things. Who is it you’re targeting and what marketing tools do you currently have in place. Once you’ve answered these questions you’ll be able to clearly understand just how and where content marketing can fit into your business.