Your future in digital marketing and other questions answered
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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
How do big companies without spending limits decide on how much and where to advertise without over doing it? We all know companies that over advertise and annoy us when we watch TV, on youtube or the internet.
How can a large business integrate all forms of social media without being too repetitive but still communicating the same message? Most consumers who follow a business on a social media platform usually follow all of the social media sites that business is on. How can a business advertise to them new content and stay exciting on each platform?
Fundamental purpose of the new digital campaign is to attact as many potential customers. Advertising tools, campaignms. Making user experience of searching brand more entertaing and less complicated.
What would social media website would you say is the most crucial for brands to get right to help them grow? Why?
Is it "wrong" for a business to try to sell the brand and what it stands for more than it's actual products?
For a company to be successful, who should they target more today to expand their brand message/image? When allocating a budget, do you think that it is possible for a company to spend the least amount and still be successful or do you think that a company needs to spend a large amount to reach their goals?
When determining a budget for a company, should the campaign organizers look into hiring outside, professional developers/marketers/researchers to help grow the company? Or should the company look to existing resources and employees to step up to the plate? I guess my question is... is there a trade-off when hiring more experience employees if they require a hire salary?
I have a hard time developing a specific number for my client's campaign budget. I just looked the general practice among other companies and the report released by official magzines. They all helped me get the budget idea. I don't know if it's okay.
I feel it's really hard to keep my own blog. I used to have couple blogs but they all ended up with a dead end soon due to my lack of motivation and less traffic. I really don't know how to keep motivated in a no traffic situation.
When developing a budget for my company, I did plenty of research and found the advertising and marketing budget for the previous years to be around $12 million. This is particularly high, but I am curious if that is a reasonable budget for a company as large and as mature as MTV?
Is SEO effective in helping a blog gain followers? How can blogs gain a legitimate following without sounding too informal?
I currently run my own blog through Squarespace. I know I have a lot to do in order to optimize my blog site for SEO, but I'm unsure of how to do this since the pages are already all built out. I guess I will start with metas and keywords? Is this the best place to start optimizing a site that was not built necessarily for optimization? I also wonder about our opinion of Squarespace vs. Wordpress. I personally like the design of squarespace better than Wordpress options, but I also don't know enough code to customize Wordpress.
You can check out my blog here.
How can company using limited budgets to create best performance that can bring lots of benefits to company? For this part, you think comapny should spend more percentage of budget on hire people or on the product?
How can we mesure the budget rightly and what is the best way to gain success from company's digital strategy?
Say I want to start a blog on technology reviews. How can I make it so that I can gain a following? Also, how can I make my content unique without it feeling like another tech blog doing the exact same thing?
How effective can blogging be for creating brand awareness?
What is the best way for your company to decide on a good budget to increase your brand awareness?
How do you determine a budget for an effective advertising campaign (or overall advertising budget)? How much of this budget is typically spent on internet marketing?
when a campaign aims to deliver a better brand image, how could we measure or evaluate the campaign besides survey?
Should customer services be associated with digital marketing for a brand?
What does the "Big Idea" refer to?
What are some different ways to build up a following for a new blog?
When changing part of your company or brand, what is the best way to handle that on the PR side? Should you explain while change is happening, before, or after?
In the digital strategy, should i write a particular campaign plan for my brand?
How do you set the budget for advertising on brand new srarting business? Based on what?
Do you think blogging is the new trend of brand's awareness?
What do you think is the most effective method to promoting a blog for a Fortune 500 company?
Being in digital PR, how effective would you say visual content (i.e. videos) is when trying to build a good strategy. Has visual content proven to be beneficial for more awareness...or even with more return?
Why would a company want to allocate funds in their marketing/advertising budget to reach other businesses? Wouldn't it be more beneficial to spend that money on reaching consumers?
In the early steps of creating your company, how important is it to focus and spend money on internet markteting?
I read an article on the Forbes website that indicated that search engine marketing and the importance of search engine optimization is on its way out. The author recommended communicating with consumers in a more direct way. How does this make sense when increasingly more consumers use search engines to begin their purchase process?
Is there such a thing as too much social media presence? By this I mean if a company has too many social media platforms can it actually negatively affect the company instead of help it?
Should the final presentation encompass any more of the past assignments other than just the digital strategy?
Is blogging becoming a new trend for boosting the brand awareness in digital marketing industry?
What are we supposed to do in the Final Presentation?
In every week's resources post, I saw many students post the article like 7 or 10 tips for how to create a better digital marketing strategy. My question is, in your opinion, what element is the most important for people to create a marketing stratedgy?
Do you think social media has become the form of advertisment that companies should mainly focus on?
What are you looking for in terms of our final presentation? Will it be this week's assignment put into a slideshow?
How can the online marketing affect the marketing in the real life?
I am a communications major, minoring in PR and sales. I mainly focus on sales and have accepted a full time offer in sales. How do you think what we've learned in this class can contribute to generating sales?
When being a digital strategist, how long does it take to develop your "radar" for when to time both good and bad news?
As the semester and ADV 420 comes to an end, I have become more and more interested digital marketing. What do you think I should include on my resume to make me stand out from the rest of the college students/graduates who are also interested in digital marketing? For example should I create a blog(s) or get Google AdWords?
When drafting a digital media marketing plan, what are some of the different costs you should account for? I was planning on accounting for labor, production equipment and a marketing team. Also, how should we best base these cost figures?
Is there one specific blog platform you recommend using as a beginner? I have been given various recommendations from friends with blogs (Blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr, Medium) and am curious which you would recommend for someone with little to no experience blogging.
When considering and assessing new areas of new media for a business to move into, how effective are video blogs? I understand that some companies utilize them, but have they been as effective as other forms of online media? Do users respond well to them?
If I am interested in going into digital marketing do you recommend becoming Google AdWords certified?
What are the best decideding factors for companies when new digital media platforms pop up? What do big companies look for to see if the platform would be something beneficial to look into doing for their company?
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Which social media platform do you think is the best and drives most success for larger companies? Why?