Your thinking I already know how to use Twitter, its part of our DMC strategy or broader marketing strategy and I’ve been using it for years and we’ve got hundreds of followers. I pose the question for self reflection, are you using the right tool for the right job, is it really giving you returns, I’m aware most of you probably have it plugged in to Google analytics but unless your selling your star power of your opinions it probably inst doing much in terms of brand recognition, So lets look at this from a different angle, social media according to online Cambridge dictionary is defined as ;

“Websites and computer programs that allow people to communicate and share information on the internet using a computer or mobile phone” 

I would draw your attention to the word people, social media is where people talk to people and share content, if you have a look at the top 100 Twitter accounts being followed on twitter I can tell you there is not a lot of brands with the exception of companies that have changed the way we live, such as Google and NASA to name a few, most are actually people.

 “On which planet does a tweet at the right time beat traditional, beautifully executed video ads? asks Mark Ritson, Associate professor of marketing and branding”

Mark Riston gives an excellent speech at the Melbourne Universities Business School. which happens to be ranked 32nd in the world…(just saying) So why have we been sold this lie that spending inordinate hours posting to Twitter for company brands is an effective strategy.

I will give you one good reason-shareholder value, another is just pure media bias and no real subjective examination of facts which Mark Ritson has so kindly done for me as you can see below, the average Australian watching TV did’t suddenly swap to the internet, As per graph nothing changed between 08 and 2012.

OK, so I know your thinking, but its 2018! and the world has changed a lot (not likely) Donald Trump is now a sitting president, I’ll give you that…that’s change and not the good kind. I digress, Below is the latest from Roy Morgan witch just further strengthens my argument.

 Yet major news media corporations such as Forbes are selling such unsubstantiated highly subjective statement such as “According to Twitter, 74% of people who follow a brand on Twitter do so to get product updates.” ……..My mind just exploded, I think i’m living out in real life, the 2006 Film “Idiocracy” The statement from Twitter is of course bias, it’s like saying; according to myself, “I’m the best blogger in the world”, this statement is untrue of course and is completely unsubstantiated furthermore Twitters comment is completely self serving, This is just one problem with public companies where almost everything said is in the best interest of the share holder and not the greater public.

In conclusion, crunch the numbers, do your due diligence and don’t believe everything the young hip millennial with the iPhone is saying.

A huge tidal wave has swept across the web and more specifically the web 2.0 and leaving in its wake web 3.0, a highly interconnected accessible and almost asymmetrical web, where business of all sizes can market there goods to the world and the world can either embrace these goods or reject them.

This new exposed terrain has presented the digital marketing cohort with many obstacles, Some of these obstacles include “Micro-communities”(William Belk, n.d.) for instance yesterday I was sitting down for my morning coffee perusing the Brussels Times, a kind of Online newspaper for Expats, behold! I see a headline stating “ Belgium’s e-sport market experiences spectacular boom” I must have been living in a cave for the past ten years.

I digress, according to the Brussels Times and studies conducted by PayPal “Belgium’s e-sport market generated three million dollars and is expected to increase by more than 20% this year.”(Maria Novak, n.d.) Furthermore  “In 2017, more than 111 million people watched the Super Bowl”(Syracuse Staff, 2017) and in contrast e-sports has “250 million”(Syracuse Staff, 2017) followers and most of which pay to view this online competition.

The learning’s above demonstrate how much momentum some micro-communities can achieve before morphing into an international industry ripe for the picking.

So, we have established that there is yet another sub culture that isn’t micro but rather turning into a macro culture. The issue for digital marketers is that sub cultures are popping up every week, and the traffic and content created on the web from these sub cultures are creating barriers in the form of digital noise in which marketers need to be able to penetrate. Other issues effecting the web 3.0 are bots, Bots can be programmed by anybody even unintentionally to click your ads thus giving you false data and feedback with software such as google analytics.

This doesn’t just affect the digital marketing guy in the corner but your whole marketing strategy hence this being a subject in my business degree, so as the old saying goes keep your friends close (The Web 3.0) and your enemies closer (bots).

To conclude digital marketers are facing a highly saturated web full of cute kittens and bots which only makes content creation authenticity all the more paramount, Be unique, creative and stop using so many reused stock photos like I’m about to do, as you can see my budget is a little low.

Why would you need to know about digital marketing communications (DMC) and it’s best practices, first off, let me throw around some hard facts and statistics for the intelligentsia of the world. “Smartphones are becoming increasingly popular in Australia and it is estimated that in 2017, 83 percent of all mobile users will have a smartphone, in comparison to 74 percent of users in 2014. The vast majority of people in Australia already have a mobile phone, with the number set to reach 19.4 million people in 2017.”(“• Smartphone Statistic,” 2018)

According to the Australian bureau of statistics (ABS) and pen pushers no pun intended, the population as of 30 June 2017 was “24, 598 933 million”(European Commission, 2015), so what there telling us is that 79 percent of Australians have mobile phones and the number of smart phone users are only increasing.

You may be thinking that marketing doesn’t apply to me, Well your just plain wrong. Let me educate you and then I’ll give you some basic tools, Let’s say you’re an accountant and your Chief Marketing Officer is of course always trying to get some huge budget for their department, the Marketing strategy has an outlay of 1.2 million, of course you saw the figures last year after their last effort and you’re not impressed with the Return of Investment (ROI).  The strategy in question is a copy and paste of last year’s marketing campaign. (The CMO thinks you have forgotten what a flop it was…Pfft)  but wait because you reading these hot tips below you’ve got this in the bag.

So, let’s talk about those basic tools you need to arm yourself with, whilst in a round table meeting 

1. SEO

SEO…. this has nothing to do with your CEO, its stands for Search Engine Optimization, So why is this so important? because web browsers are constantly updating there algorithm’s that help keep keywords part of the search engine cycle in order to make your brand more discoverable on the internet.

2. Social Media

Social media, I’m not going to extrapolate about what this even is, rather where you should put it, as I mentioned earlier approximately 83 percent of mobile phone users are using a smart phone. I’m sure the digital designer at work thinks everything looks amazing on the their huge Apple Mac screen, but most people will be interacting via their Smart phone probably on the toilet, train or in bed…no data on that one. “Consumers are expecting cohesion across multiple platforms, and the easier they are to use the more likely this will drive viewer engagement”.(Jeremy Goldman, n.d.)

So, to wrap up this blog, next time you get a chance to even sit at the table be sure to raise your hand and ask the hard questions, such as “have we updated our SEO strategy and are our invested scarce resources showing transparent ROI as our messages may be going nowhere. That will raise the eyebrows of any CEO and just watch his head turn towards the CMO.

PS…listen more than you speak.

Stay tuned for more Digital Marketing communication best practices