Day 3 — #APDMM17 — DMTIINDIA — Social Media Overview — Introduction to Digital Media Marketing — Part 2 (Faculty Subhobroto Chakroborty.)
This was a quick session. Most of the stuff had been covered in the first session by Subho and I had summarized here. This post just highlights the key points.
He revisited the Inbound Marketing methodology and how customer data generated through Inbound is important to build relationships & loyalty.
Telecom operators have the best customer database. But they are expensive for smaller brands & business.
Small & medium enterprises have to rely on affiliate marketing for customer data. The data normally has email ids & phone numbers and is not 100% clean.
BUYER PERSONA
Subho also explained the relevance of persona based approach to blogging. This is a time consuming approach but it reaches it out to the relevant audience. The days of blogging technical, product & brand related content are gone. The future is persona based blogging. He also strongly recommended that a blog should be separate from the company’s website and the content should be relevant to customer’s behaviour. Hubspot’s blogs has great content based on behavioural approach.
HubSpot defines a buyer persona as a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. When creating your buyer persona(s), consider including customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals. The more detailed you are, the better.
Buffer’s Kevan Lee’s Marketing Personas: The Complete Beginner’s Guide explains in detail about personas with some great examples. He also provides a quick overview on what you should include in your marketing persona template:
HubSpot’s Pamela Vaughan shares a free persona template and elucidates on How to create detailed buyer personas for your business.
Subho explains that the rational behind the behavioural approach is consumers are totally not interested in the products, services or brands. They do not visit the website to know about the products or services. They want relevant, helpful & informative content.
I personally think that, yes persona based blogging has its relevance, but so do content pertaining to your industry. Yes, the blog should not brag about the product or service but it can provide content relevant to the industry it is in and any other dependent industries or entities. For example, a solar product company can blog about renewable energies, which country is a leader in renewables, etc. Or a bicycle company can blog about fitness tips, energy saved by cycling, how mass cycling will reduce pollution, best cycling routes in the country & globe, etc.
NAVRASA — the Nine emotions
Shubho also threw light on the Navarasa in which Nava signifies Nine and Rasa signifies Emotions. Shubho’s reference to context to the navarasa was how content can be created around these navarasa.
In LifePositive, Swati Chopra attempts to see how this ancient idea still runs into the streams of our lives. Perhaps the rasas could be the lens through which we can look at and understand ourselves better? The nine rasas of ancient Indian thought are: shringara (erotic love), karuna (compassion), adbhuta (awe, wonderment), shant (peace, equanimity), hasya (laughter, mirth), veer (valour, heroism), bhaya (fear), vibhatsa (disgust) and raudra (anger, fury).
AD SIZES — Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter
Most successful ad sizes — As a rule of thumb, wider ad sizes tend to outperform their taller counterparts, due to their reader-friendly format. Readers absorb information in “thought units,” several words at a time. Wider sizes let them comfortably read more text at a glance without having to skip a line and return to the left margin every few words, as they’d have to with a narrower ad.
If positioned well, wide ad sizes can increase your earnings significantly. The sizes we’ve found to be the most effective are the 336x280 large rectangle, the 300x250 medium rectangle, the 728x90 leaderboard, the 300x600 half page, and on mobile the 320x100 large mobile banner. Keep in mind that while these ad sizes typically perform well, you should use the size that best complements your pages. For more information about these ad sizes, see our guide to ad sizes. It’s better to add one recommended ad unit than two smaller ad units next to each other.
Facebook Ad Guide — Infographic below by Jon Loomer
LinkedIn Ad Specs & Guidelines — Sproutsocial’s Kevin King provides a complete guide to LinkedIn Ads.
Adsvise has collated specs for various ads for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Adwords, Google+, Tumblr & Pinterest.
PARALLAX WEBSITE
We also very briefly touched upon parallax scrolling. I don’t exactly remember why this was touched upon though. But since it was touched upon, below is some information on Parallax Websites.
One big web design trend of the moment is parallax scrolling, which involves the background moving at a slower rate to the foreground, creating a 3D effect as you scroll down the page. It can sometimes be overwhelming, but when used sparingly it can provide a nice, subtle element of depth. (Source: http://www.creativebloq.com/web-design/parallax-scrolling-1131762)
Unleashed Technologies’ Jaymes Brown highlights about the pros & cons of parallax scrolling. One of the main con being SEO taking a hit since websites with a single page allow only one set of meta information, one effective h1 tag, and one URL.
Further References
Insightful Empathy — Personas — Few persona examples:
HubSpot’s Academy shares two examples in buyer personas created in HubSpot.
Wheelhouse Advisors — Why you need to create buyer personas?
