Your future in digital marketing and other questions answered
Like this Article?
Consider sharing it with your friends.
Howdy, all. Wanted to answer a few of your questions from last week below. Keep 'em coming!
- Graham
How does a company decide how much money it is going to allocate for online marketing and digital content?
It comes down to each company's specific financial situation and budget, really. There's no process that every business follows for this. Most companies look at their overall profit/loss for the year and what potential revenue/customers they might be able to bring in through marketing efforts to come up with this number. At the company where I work, we look at how a particular marketing effort has performed for us in the past to then figure out what the ROI will be in launching it again.
Is there any sort of community where new bloggers can post to gain more visibility from popular bloggers? Have you found other bloggers endorsing you to be a large part of generating a following?
You bet! Networking with other bloggers can be a great way to build a following. Each niche or interest has its own places where bloggers and other influencers congregate. In some instances, that's Twitter or Facebook. In other cases, bloggers and influencers meet at conferences or events. For example, the BlogHer network is a very powerful network of women in social media who also often meet for in-person events.
How do you convert a simple blog into a powerful brand ambassador and sales magnet for the business?
Make it interesting and useful for your customers/audience! David Meerman Scott has some powerful examples on this in his book. A blog won't be a powerful sales tool unless it really hooks your audience with creative, interesting posts that folks might want to share – building your brand's credibility and influence in the process.
In regards to creating a blog, are there "hot topics" that would be best to write about? In creating my own blog what would spark the most interest? What would be the next step after WordPress?
Writing about anything particularly current or in the news is a great way to find "hot topics." After all, so many news sources today just look for hot takes from blogs and social media to then excerpt (helping to spread your influence). Think also about topics that people care about and talk about, even if they're not in the news – or a topic you have a lot of expertise in that others don't. After setting up your blog with Wordpress, I'd advise to write, write, and write some more to develop your voice and concepts for future posts. Once you think you've gotten the hang of it, I'd start to publicize your blog more by talking it up on social media, engaging with other bloggers, and commenting on other sites.
Companies who are looking to really win the digital marketing game typically with hire someone who is a "digital strategist" to help them. In today's age, it seems like a majority of people who are tech-savvy and have an eye for business can become a pretty adept digital strategist. For someone who would like to really start looking into the field, what would you reccommend for them to learn first, and what processes must they know if they really want to win the "digital world"?
I know this class can sometimes be frustrating in not having an instructor in-person to ask questions to – but in a way, this is really useful for digital marketing. Tactics change so quickly week to week, with new tools always emerging. It's impossible to ever truly be "done" with learning this field. I think having a strong grasp of communications – whether offline or online – is the best first step to a successful career in this field. If you can't communicate well (whether through writing, graphic design/photography/videography, etc), it's going to be hard to make a go of it online. Second, really go deep on digital tools. Play around with them as much as you can. Experiment. Read what other people are doing online, and stay up on digital marketing news and information. Just like hard work drives success for MSU's basketball and football teams, so it does with digital marketing. Finally, don't be afraid to ask others for help or advice (including your instructors!)
Is owning/writing for a blog beneficial for future employers to see?
Absolutely! In fact, I got my first communications job with Gov. Granholm in large part due to a Michigan government and politics blog I kept up when I was at MSU (yeah, I was a nerd – but a nerd with a job before most of my friends!) ;-) Owning and writing for your own blog is a great way to show dedication, and to show off your digital media chops. Also, the longer you keep your blog up – and the more links you can drive to it – the better you can optimize your own name for search. Start your own website/blog today!
Comments & Feedback
What is the reasoning behind having a strict 10 slide count presentation?
What are you most expect to see in our presentation and how can you tell the budget we set for the campaign is appropriate?
When using sites like Prezi and SlideShare, our class projects are posted online for everyone to see. Do you think our future employers look at these presentations we make for classes?
Are there different softwares used in the industry for social media planning and marketing? I know there are ones online like HootSuite, but there have to be more in-depth ones that companies use too.
Alot of my classes say any type of presentation is fine, powerpoint, prezi, etc. Is their a recommended one that is "current" and used more than others. What are some benefits to each? I havnt used all of them before.
What are some cheaper options than Google Adwords for a start-up company since you have to pay-per-click which would be very expensive for a small company.
For (11-23) participation:
I like your guys idea of uploading it to a slideshare frame for our digital plan. In your own experience in the professional world... what would you consider the most appropriate or highly recognized platform for presentations? (i.e. PPT, Prezi, Slideshare). Also, I understand blogging is good practice and a game changer for your career progressions. Would you consider WordPress as THE formidable outlet, or do you possibly have better recommendations?
I like your guys idea of uploading it to a slideshare frame for our digital plan. In your own experience in the professional world... what would you consider the most appropriate or highly recognized platform for presentations? (i.e. PPT, Prezi, Slideshare). Also, I understand blogging is good practice and a game changer for your career progressions. Would you consider WordPress as THE formidable outlet, or do you possibly have better recommendations?
Is it appropriate to recycle conent through a span of a year, lets say for instance you have a good content schedule but may have a few missing and or ope spots, would it be okay to post the same content again if it were a hit the first time, or will this bore viewers and make your brand strategy less effective?
What do you think the next big thing for digital media will be?
The final brand strategy would be something fun to do beacuse its our final project to do and I will work hard on the final power point.
For the presentaion, what would you recommend to do or be awared of?
Is there any important strategy or plan for doing goodp resentioan?
Also, I want to know how to make a good presentaion.
You talked about owning a blog will benifit future employment. I understand creative advertisng studnet usually own their website ofr profolio. Howver, what content you think a advertsiing account track student should have for the page?
Focusing on hot topics is a good way keep your blog going. But the question is how could you nicely make use of these hot topics? Do you always need to find an association between these hot issues and your brand. If not always then under what circumstances should you make the association and how are you gonna do it?
There are ups and downs to run an official blog for your company. I should admit blog is a nice way to keep your audiences updated. But the downside could be you may lose some customers because of the contents you post. People are just too different and it's hard to feed everyone with one simple blog. Some contents which satisfy you may offend someone else. So I am wondering if it's better to keep couple blogs depending on how many groups of customers you have.
When presenting to an audience, one must take their attention span into consideration. What other sources of media (art, video, music, etc.) do you guys think is the best way to keep the audience engaged during a presentation?
What is the best approach when creating a presentation that would attract everyone's attention, but explain a lot of information as well without a lot of text heavy material?
Audience attention spans never last long. Do you think it's important to tell a story about your presentation topic?
I am graduating this semester and want to get into digital markeitng for my career. I have taken a lot of necessary steps in order to set myself up for this, but I am having difficulty finding great places to work, as well as finding my own desired role. I think I want to be more on the content creation side of digitial marketing. What kind of positions/places should I be looking at?
What are some of the best digital marketing campaigns out there at the moment in terms of big companies? What do they do specifically to make their campaign stand out against the others?
For presentations is it better to focus on visual points or rather explain talking?
So our final presentation is nothing related with our chosen company, right? if slides are 1-10, how long do you prefer to present??
Presentations are incredibly important when trying to get a message across. How would you say one should properly prepare for a professional presentation?
What do you think is next in terms of new digital media? Eventually I feel like companies are going to run out of ideas for posts, blogs, social media sites, etc. What will they do then?
How much swing and pull do top bloggers have when promoting a company or campaign? Is it more or less than people think and what is the best way to target these top blog influencers?
Is the slide about this class or our brands?
How do you execute a comprehensive digital strategy if you have two very distinct target markets that don't really over lap? Is it better to just focus on one or try to incorporate both?
What's the best way to come up with a catchy headline for a blog post?
participation for 11/24
In your opinion, what is the msot important aspect of a brands digital marketing strategy and why? How would upcoming companies strengthen their digital marketing strategy to compare to a bigger brand?
If we put a video in our final PowerPoint and it only works if ou download the slideshow will we be marked down for this?
I have been re-evaluating my big idea for my digital strategy. However, I keep going back to what I originally stated, which is forming a Vlog for my company. Are vlogs still a developing new media approach? If so, do you think a vlog can help improve a company image?
I know that there is a 10-slide requirement for the final presentations. My idea about the strtegy seems hard to fiit into 10 slides. Can I go beyond the page limit?
Is prezi a suitable format for the final presentation?
What is the best way to create a presentation that is formal? PowerPoint, slideshare, etc.?
Would you say there are major differences between different brands for their digital marketing stategies? Or are they generally the same?
Do we need a cover page for the final presentation? Is that consider as one of the 10 pages?
I understand that there is a 10-slide requirement for our final presentations. My campaign idea seems to be a bit complex, and as a result I am having a hard time fitting it into 10 slides. Is the title slide included within the 10-slide requirement? Thanks!
Do different markets require different digital marketing strageties?
How do you think of ideas for your personal blog posts? Like where do you find inspiration for them?
Is it likely that a brand would have their digital strategist create a presentation similar to the one we have to create?
Do our final presentations need to match what we submitted last week? I have a better idea for the project.
Making presentation for my brand, do I have to include everything that I learned from this class? Is it presentation trying to give a audeince what my brand is in marketing and advertising?
Generally when people start their blogs, they have a small following and will post quality content. However, it seems like after a while, these "bloggers" get a little lazy, will just repost articles to their blogs, and their once valued followers will begin to just scroll past their posts. This also can happen if the blogs have too much advertisements on their pages. For someone who blogs and wants to grow their brand through it, when do you think it is too "much" to have ads and links to other subpages, or do you think this is not a negative at all?
Do you think selling sex is a good advertising?
What is the main metric that needs to be monitored to determine the success of a digital marketing campaign?
For a company who pays for advertising cost per click, since it doesnt gaurantee actual sales or impressions, does that often give a company a negative effect? Meaning the cost outweighed the benefit of that ad?
How do we calculate the PPC advertising budget since we do not exactly know how many times of our ads going to be click?