I`ve read many posts on the importance of social media and getting into the “click”, as well as how to get into the “click” and what to do when inside the “click” of a desired community. Now, I agree with most of them (as I`m an easily persuadable person), so I thought I would add my 2 cents worth on the methods and importance of creating brand awareness using the “clicks”.
John Wooden, famous basketball coach at UCLA, is the inspiration behind Matt McGee`s SEO Success Pyramid. Wooden created the Pyramid of Success to inspire his basketball players. He didn`t speak about the act of winning, but focused instead on the process it would take to become a winning team. McGee follows a similar route in that instead of talking rankings, his pyramid discusses the process “of making great web sites that earn traffic and convert visitors into customers”.
Breaking news on the paid advertising scene is Google`s deal with Seth MacFarlane, creator of television gems like Family Guy and American Dad! Gone are the days of Saturday morning Nickelodeon cartoons, as MacFarlane plans to release his Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy exclusively to the Internet in September, and it`s funded by Pay Per Click!
Advertisements are not my favourite things in the world. It`s not that I find them intrusive (aside from pop ups and unsolicited emails), and it`s not really that I find them annoying (aside from pop ups, unsolicited emails and property pamphlets), it`s that by and large I find ads to be bland, insipid and uninspired. In some instances it`s very difficult to believe that the ideas were actually sanctioned and given the go-ahead by a committee of supposedly informed decision makers. The thing that makes it all so much sadder is that you just know that someone was very excited and very proud of the concept. Take the Meerkat in the South African Vodacom ad, for instance, many people thought that it was brilliant, cool, funny and marketing genius. But an equal number of people, myself included, thought that it was ridiculous, inane and epitomised the gunk that is scraped off the bottom of the barrel of creativity.
After doing everything you can think of to improve the performance of your website, you may still find yourself wondering why it is not achieving its set goals. You`ve made the design user-friendly, you`ve added valuable content, and you`ve invested money and time into marketing it. Yet your Analytics report displays a rather dangerous looking bounce rate, which doesn`t show an inclination to decrease anytime soon.
In mid-June, an NBC host died of a heart attack, and not unusually, the network delayed reporting it so that his family could be alerted. But the news broke on Wikipedia prior to the announcement on television, because a junior network employee updated a Wiki biography - and changed it to the past tense. The story probably got out of hand because people who heard the rumour Googled it, landed on the Wiki biography on the first Google SERP, noted the tense, and spread the news.
Advertising campaigns, both online and offline try to tap into the emotions of their target audience. They try to evoke feelings of pleasure, joy, happiness, contentment, pride and desire; feelings that can only find release or be brought to fruition with the purchase of the product or service concerned. However, these efforts often fall short as advertisers fail to relate to their audience. They fail to get the audience on their side and this usually results in consumer apathy. People shop out of habit, or chase prices and can seldom be convinced to switch brands. One of the most effective ways to gain consumer sympathy and generate loyalty is to share something personal that relates in some way to the campaign at hand. Revelations of this kind are known as back-stories.
