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I couldn't help but follow up on my earlier post about  Nike and Adidas's use of social media  as I noticed Adidas was leapfrogging Nike on Facebook.  In my last post, Nike's page had a greater number of likes and a comparable, though slightly smaller about of engagement.  At present Nike's overall engagement rate has actually dropped from my last post to .55% while Adidas's rate has rocketed from .71% to 1.09% of users who have "liked" their page, actually engaging with it, be it comments, likes, or shares.  Additionally, Adidas's page has now surpassed Nike's in overall page likes by over 500,000 likes in less than a month while Nike's number has barely budged. Again the trend I identified in my first post is unmistakable.  Adidas is posting regularly, with a post every two to four days while Nike is posting once every two weeks.  And looking at the recent posts Nike's relative advantage in getting huge responses to their Fa...

A popular trend in today's online world is Search Engine Optimization or SEO. The basic goal of this growing field is "improving and promoting a web site in order to increase the number of visitors the site receives from search engines." So that when certain key words are input, the site appears closer to the top of the links provided. SEOmoz provides an introduction book of which I will review in a series of posts about the basics of SEO.  This post covers the first three chapters. SEO is key to accessing consumers and followers.  Being findable means more views to your page which is key to accessing a broader audience, and potentially attracting revenue.  SEO can be reverse engineered to design a website to target consumers based on the words they type into a search engine, or it can be used to simply boost exposure and publicity which may turn into revenue.  Regardless of how it is done or how it works, we all know from personal experience that appearing f...

In the last post we looked at the basic mechanics of how search engines work, why its important and how content can be made readable to crawlers and enhance search rankings.  In this post we'll look at creating friendly web page design for crawlers, how to maximize on keyword search.  This content comes from the same article. While plain text remains the best way for crawlers to index content, there are alternatives while using more complicated mediums such as flash or interactive images to insure that crawlers can follow your content.  Using "alt" text on images, or descriptive text below the image ensure that content is read by the search engine.  Providing transcripts is another way to make audio or video content readable to crawlers.  Further, using the "Cache" feature in google searches you can see exactly what the crawlers see! Another way to ensure crawlers find all the content on a page is to have all of your pages properly linked through the hom...

In the last post (from mid-February) about the sailing team I mentioned that social media and other online marketing media is used to promote the sailing team.  The sites strive to make people aware of the existence of the team and to connect people to it.  Since then there has been a continuation of pursuing those goals, with a few interesting results, and a decline in both views and engagement of the content. Overall there has been a decrease in the number of people the Facebook page reaches, however there is only a very slight loss in the number of people who are engaging in the content.  Both of the twitter accounts have gained a slightly larger audience, but not a substantial one.  This has all occurred over the busiest part of the sailing season, correlated with an increase in the number of posts on the pages by myself and other admin. Since the last post there has been only 4 additional page likes, a drop on the total reach from o...

The GoPro. Most people have heard of it - the "World's Most Versatile Camera", the all sport, all conditions camera. practically indestructible, waterproof, and creates epic videos and some extraordinary photos. And most people have heard of it through the company's exceptional online marketing. Understanding what makes GoPro's campaign successful, and the lessons it has for other companies are bountiful. GoPro has five main web pages, a Facebook page, a Twitter account, an Instagram, YouTube page, and an official website. The company, which has been around since 2002, has only really launched into the public eye in the past three or four years. And that doesn't happen by chance. Their Facebook page was created in early 2009, and since then they've gathered almost 5 million likes on their page, gaining a million every four to six months since mid 2011. Their twitter page, which has been around since at least June 2012 (though it is hard to de...

Just Do It vs. Impossible is Nothing.  Nike and Adidas, both world renowned athletic brands, incredibly successful and mindful of their use of social media.  Their Facebook presence is incredible, together gathering well over 70 million likes on their pages.  These titans use a variety of methods, similar in some ways and differentiated in others which have led them both to successful marketing campaigns on Facebook. One of the most important things to note about both of these companies strategies is the ability to localize, or target, specific audiences through different pages.  Both Nike and Adidas have pages dedicated to specific shoes, such as the Air Force 1 or the Adidas F50, and have pages dedicated to specific sports ranging from soccer to baseball to cricket.  One distinction that is highly noticeable is that there are Nike pages designed specifically for certain countries, including Nike India and Nike Spain.  While these pages are we...

As captain of the UC San Diego Sailing Team I have sought to improve the visibility of the team and deepen our roots to the San Deigo community.  One device that we have used to accomplish that goal is social media. Our team produced a Facebook page in late October of 2012 and updated it semi-regularly getting team members and recent alumni to "like" the page, reaching about 50 likes.  Since then the posts have grown more consistant and contained more engaging and relevant information for people to respond to, attempting to build on personalization and two-way communication that social media allows for.  Through encouraging the team to outreach to close friends and family we have well over 100 likes and climbing.  This number is now rising due to viral spread of information; When people like and comment on our content their friends see it posted in their newsfeed and in turn like our page to learn more. In these short 5 months the page has launched ...

The Qualitative Research Consultants Association's Susan Saurage-Altenloh, and American Marketing Association's Expert Contributor, Jennifer Bunner, write about the in's and out's of current marketing platforms and how to avoid mistakes in digital space. In the QRCA's article, the first four of the top ten trends in marketing for 2013 can be seen to revolve around social media marketing, which just happens to be the number one trend right now.  The next three, mobile marketing, introducing interactive formats, and technology-enabled researchers, all suggest a marketing world centered around the web.  With recent connections between people's online lives and their mobile lives with the expansion of the Iphone and other smartphones, social media can only be seen as having more potential as sites like Facebook and Twitter become embedded in these devices.  As discussed in previous posts, social media's interactive feature is exactly what makes it a special...